Book review - Sita's Sister by Kavita Kané

Kavita Kané titled her latest mythological fiction ‘Sita’s Sister’. She did not call it ‘Urmila’. Why? Could this be Kavita’s way to make our selectively aroused mythological memories acknowledge the presence of the woman who came from such a significant lineage, but lay forgotten under reams of demi-Gods, if not over-shadowed by her sister’s glory? Somewhere, the very act of writing about Urmila becomes rife with the politics of making the silenced heard, much like what Maithili Sharan Gupt's Hindi poem 'Urmila' sought to do. ‘Sita’s Sister’ thus becomes a bravely imaginative way to re-present one of the world’s most famous stories by letting a woman tell it, not in first person (as the blurb misguides) but through her thoughts and travails as penned by the author. 

Any idea of touching-up our sacred epic must stem from an aim, or wherein lies the point of removing the holy cloth from a codified story so many know by rote? Unlike fiction on shelves, this book is not about its plot and its pace, points of suspense and thrill, peaks of narration, twists or even climaxes. Those, we know like granny told us. This book stands distinct for its strong characterization and the larger socio-cultural ideas that find vent through it. Primarily, Kavita Kané re-creates Lakshman’s wife Urmila for us, portrays her relationships, shows the mind behind her 14-year-long fortitude and honestly depicts the various roles she lives or is made to live. 

In doing so two important things happen. One, the story is contemporized to be assimilated by modern mindsets which like to question gender discourses and patriarchal fabrics. Two, the chosen ideas of the original story which are highlighted help universalize the story. Both these happen because of the epical themes Kavita chooses to fill her novel with, and which I would like to elucidate.

Thematic Significance

Making it Human

From the four ‘disarmingly frank’ sisters in Mithila to the three lonely mother-queens of Ayodhya, from brothers inseparable to Kings of glorious kingdoms and from the scheming Manthara to the evil Ravana, Kavita has shown us the humans behind these calendar personae. 

Sita, who picked up the Shiv Dhanush at 10, is a ‘wide-eyed, lovelorn idiot’ on seeing Ram. Urmila enjoys a ‘flamboyant mind’ and ‘irrational bursts of resentment’, falling for Lakshman, the ‘reluctant man in love’. And, ‘probably he was distracted’ when godly Ram broke the bow during Sita’s swayamvar. Lakshman’s introduction of his brothers to Urmila paints them in all their boyish contrasts. When Lakshman decides to follow Ram into the forest, pure human heart-wrenching turmoil takes over, and Urmila, in faux anger towards her husband, wonders ‘would hatred be easier than loving?’ At this point, emotional portrayals of mortal souls supersede the story itself, giving all characters an earthly dimension.

What have also been humanized are character motivations. Kaikeyi’s ‘evil manipulation’ in opportunely asking for the two boons and demanding Bharat’s coronation, the fulcrum to all events, is ‘self-preservation’ according to her. For did not Sunaina admit to her daughters that ‘maternal love can falter’, after all? 

Overarching is an idea of all humanity living parallel lives. The ‘unusually strong bond between the brothers’ is reflected in the one the sisters share. While the men follow their idea of dharma, the women follow their own. Each woman in the palace of Ayodhya ‘was living in her own pain, their chambers their refuge’. Kaikeyi was prejudiced against Sita and Urmila against Kaikeyi, both wrongly. Ultimately, as Urmila puts it, ‘we are suffering in common – love and loss, separation and abstinence. Or Fate, besides having a twisted sense of humour, is quite egalitarian’. 

Fate reminds me … of course there is a larger pattern at work here - Of ‘moments snatched from Fate’ and predestination, auspicious nakshatras and curses, Gods and their whims and demons and their evil. In the most significant of human circumstances, invisible hands of one or the other of these are realized later. As if men are playthings in their hands of a scheme they cannot defeat.  When Sita is abducted by Ravana in the forest, Sumitra says ‘everyone had lost their minds … this was to be’, excusing human error by blaming destiny, something that even the theory of karma is used for in texts like Kalidasa’s ‘Shakuntalam’. 

However, Kavita has successfully relegated fantastical and fatalistic agencies to the background, to keep the focus on those man-made. I liked how Lakshman reminded Ram in this book - ‘don’t blame it so conveniently on Fate, brother’. This makes us see the author’s mind. 

Women-speak, male order and Dharma

While human thoughts and motivations endow the book with an emotional chord, what gives it a revolutionary strength of overturning boulders of patriarchal thought is the voice given to female characters. No, not just to Urmila! 

Women in ‘The Ramayana’ are to ‘reap what they receive, not what they have sown…’ but the women in ‘Sita’s Sister’ are different. Unabashed, Urmila confesses to Lakshman that ‘I am yours … you are not mine’, when she accuses Lakshman’s faltering love as ‘depriving us of our present at the price of withholding our future’. Sita confesses for Ram that ‘I love him … I have to marry him for myself. To make myself happy’. When discussion is rife in Ayodhaya to get Ram remarried, Urmila lashes ‘I won’t have it, Sita’ and Sita adds ‘And neither will I…it should be me who should be protesting the loudest.’ Urmila bluntly questions Lakshman as to why he needs to go with Ram and Sita into exile. ‘Either take me … or don’t go’ is what she screams. Mandavi wows with her outburst at Bharat’s decision to go into exile too, lamenting ‘I am sick of these lofty words … where am I? Who am I? … I feel like a mad caged animal’. Even Sunaina, their mother, ‘would have calmly broken off the wedding, social mores be damned’ if she knew what was coming. Some very strong statements there.

But nothing will come close to Urmila’s confrontation of the elders and ministers in Ram’s hut in the forest, when Bharat decides to do unto Mandavi what was done to Urmila. It is the questions which Urmila raises here that open the debate between the patriarchal idea of loyalty and duty versus the ‘personal’ one of love for women - an idea beautifully treated in Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and humorously in Aristophanes’s ‘Lysistrata’.

Lakshman confidently pronounces that a ‘soldier does not take his wife to the battlefield’. Urmila stays back. But when Mandavi is to undergo similar years of loneliness, she bursts out - ‘everything, Gurudev, has been personal here, every single political decision’. This is what she says for the ‘royal family … cruelest to its own family members’ – ‘We have talked about all sorts of dharma – of the father and the sons, of the king and the princes, of the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, even of the wife for her husband. But is there no dharma of the husband for his wife? Of the son for his mother? Is it always about the fathers, sons and brothers?’ Similarly, when Ram makes Sita undergo the chastity test, Urmila says forcefully – ‘It was a dilemma of a husband versus the king- who is higher is the moral question.’ It is a question that is significant for epics from around the world!

Countless such examples of liberties taken exist, not just on the part of women characters but also on the narrator’s. The original story is cleverly pinched and tweaked in places to add challenging facets to it and generate fresh perspectives in the reader’s minds. This merging of original with a new version is so seamlessly done that you wonder if it ‘really’ happened, or is it happening only here, through Kavita’s pen. It is this that can make a reader itch frustratingly, and Google the ‘original’ events. It did me! 

Some problems 

The language used in the book is in keeping with its year of publication, not the original’s. Which means, some readers may find conversations between characters too "modern" (though not slangy) and thus unable to fit into the image we carry of these mythological characters through popular media or from the ancient context they have been resurrected from. Usage like ‘being dolled and decked up’, over use of ‘dear’ combined with enough huge words like ‘perspicacity’ sometimes interfered with the impression.

While all successful effort has been made to describe the characters’ emotions and conflicts, the physical description of palaces and chambers seems typically borrowed from the TV version. They lack in grandeur as well as novelty, and keep the book bereft of much royal beauty. Traits of characters, say ‘composed’ for Sita and similar adjectives for Ram, and ‘huskily’ for Lakshman’s manner of speaking are repeated till Kingdom come, as is the mention of the strong relationship between the two brothers. 

And then there is lots of alliteration, which I personally enjoy but which may not strike the right note with every reader.   

Conclusion

‘Sita’s Sister’ is a courageous re-creation of mythology, which presents us with a subaltern viewpoint. It seems to be written in response to Lakshman’s burning question – ‘O Urmila! Will the world ever know of your inner suffering, your divine sacrifice?’ yet it is not just her version. Every character is given space and voice, even if the author does not let them break free from the fabric they were originally created in, or turn the events of the story accordingly. None is ‘indicted’ by the author just like none is favoured unduly. Perhaps, Kavita Kané intended to erase the black and white idealism that epics are wont to have. So, while Kavita subtly shows us ‘ugly cracks in the façade (of the palace of Ayodhaya) … hiding a lot more than they showed’ she also works us ‘a reminder … of the little evil residing in all of us.’ 

While each reader receives and appropriates this into their contemporary lives, the book will make us rethink even if it won’t make us question what we have lived believing. It will raise the dust, make us examine ourselves – in the man-made scheme of things and also in the larger pattern. Isn’t this what all epics the world over asked of us – Know Thyself? 

A must read, especially for those who like their mythology served anew. 

Sita's Sister is a Rupa Publication, 2014

[This review was commissioned by Rupa Publications. All views are my own.]

365 Days in Vegas

Once upon a time, a stranger called Jairam Mohan sent me a hello on FB messenger. True to his habit, or fearing I may throw my jutti at him, he came straight to the point. He asked me if I wanted to do the Wordpress Daily Prompt; 365 Writing Prompts with him, for the year 2014. ‘Arrey? Na jaan na pehchaan. And he thinks I’ll shake hands with him and just agree to a year’s writing commitment and company? Banda hai kaun yeh?’ I didn’t say that, though I instantly scrounged his FB profile for naked ladies in orgies and worse, bad grammar. While I found neither, I politely told him the task seemed too daunting to me and Wordpress was to a Blogger what an air plane is to a cyclist. I suggested we rope in more people to keep the prompts/month real. He suggested Sid Balachandran, the cutie pie daddy on a parenting site. I had Rekha Dhyani in mind – sane, sober and sensible.   

Within hours a group chat formally called Project 365 was buzzing and beeping with to-dos, just a few days before 2013 flipped over to 2014. Various social media accounts had to be set, logos designed, invites for guest authors sent and there was no room for even a susu break in sub-zero temperatures. After the namkaran, we four were now a Core Team, and even though we continued to wear our chaddis under our pants, we knew there was a superhero inside each one of us to have signed up for this. A mad, mad superhero!

Mad, because we were four complete strangers agreeing to be faithful to a shared ‘cause’.

Mad, because between families and friends we now had a bunch of prompts to write on every month for 12 months!

Mad, because who has seen tomorrow let alone a whole year for such a massive commitment made public? Oh, the ignominy if one was to quit. And, the extra prompts!

What led me on, despite my husband’s sweetly strict ‘If you join, you should see this to the finish’? That all four of us had the same aim in mind – to write more and to be read even more than before. It is this that made me feel one with Jai, Rekha and Sid and lay to rest my fears that this was indeed not a plan by South India to take over North India but one of pure and secular brotherhood!

And that’s how it remained …

Our tiny chat box was not just for discussing Guest Author posts, our own late lateef ones, asking Jai to write for unloved Open Prompts or Sid to design the world for Project 365. Between good morning and good night, the tiny window became a place we sought, each one of us, to share personal joys or sorrows, troubles or terrific news, or even gossip piping hot in the vine and consumed like hot potatoes. The ‘seen by everyone’ would excite us suddenly, because it meant we were all four there, despite such different day plans and jobs. Oh, I would go to hell if I revealed what all of who all we chatted about but I will say we rightly named our group chat – Vegas (and the new thread Vegas 2.0, since the first one was creaking under its weight). Vegas - because much was supposed to remain in there, as it does. Superhero swear! 

How did the writing go? 

Moods oscillated between ‘Oh! I love this prompt’ and ‘Gah! Someone murder Wordpress, please!’ Somewhere in between were moments of ‘Guys, emergency in family/travel plans/writer’s block. Someone exchange my next prompt, please?’ Every month each one hoped it was their turn to pick the prompts first but there was much order-order in all the chatty disorder, and a discipline sincerely followed. The presence of a couple of Guest Authors each month kept us feeling smug about the trust over 20 co-writers reposed in our Project. So, somewhere between gentle-manners and wildness, workaholic-ism and parenthood, vanity and bossiness, we managed the writing quite smoothly.  And not a day out of the 365 was missed! The pride was enough to make us feel glad that we did what we did. We began with adulation for co-writers and ended up with realizing our own niches and sharpening our own skills. 

Often, friends seemed surprised at my insistence to write for prompts, or even to continue with a Project that, in their eyes, held little value. There was a belief that this was forced writing, and that creative secretions flow best when there isn’t a topic and an impending deadline. But at the end of the day, we all spent much more time writing than talking about it. Somewhere, those 4-5 prompts a month helped – as an exercise in discipline and one in making us make time for what we claimed to be our passion. Only those who have gone through it will realize its value, but then, just how many can for a whole year? A whole year!

Chaddi out or in, it does feel like a superhero feat. To the Core!

I almost forgot … this is my last prompt post for Project 365. It says ‘You’re a Winner!’ which I am in so many ways. It also tells me that I won $1 billion dollars in the local lottery, asking me how I will spend the money.

Honestly? I’d spend all some of it to fly my Core Team to Vegas, the real one. For who else can I thank for leaving me so much richer by so much writing and such good friends? After all, it's not about who became friends first. It's also about who lasted as buddies right till the end.

I will miss Project 365.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - You’re a Winner - You’ve just won $1 billion dollars in the local lottery. You do not have to pay tax on your winnings. How will you spend the money?]

'Coffee?', and then it began.

Six years back we met online, after six years of passing out from the same school. We scrapped and texted, swung between dilly and dally but finally met to conclude over just three cups of coffee that we should get married. We did, but not in the coffee shop. The owner didn’t think hosting our wedding pheras in that favourite cosy corner of ours would boost his cappuccino sales. 

So strange! 

Anyway, ever since and like never before, we have been running coffee-wards when we are happy or low, cold or hot, or even when in the middle of a domestic argument. We turned to a coffee shop much like one would to a place of worship – for calm, for conflict-ridding and for the cocoa, of course. (No, we can’t create the same "feel" at home, or the coffee. Plus, who will make it while the cold war is on?) 

Then, we had a bubba. (In the hospital, of course!)

Some of his first few baby steps were taken, you guessed it, in different coffee shops around the city. Those places offered us not just a comfortable environ for his toddling but also enough cocoa-happy people on the tables around who kept bubba busy with their ‘cutie pie’ antics. Collateral advantage? Me and my husband could hold hands; over the table while passing tiny packets of brown sugar or collecting used stirrers, wiping off drops of condensation or those of condescension for the fight we carried there. 

And this is how it continues to be. 

Why, only this weekend last we went to one of the bigger malls in South Delhi. The annual ritual of posing in front of as many Xmas trees as possible had to be done. While I wanted to live my childhood fantasy of flicking away a big and delicious decoration for my tree at home, the carols in the background kept me holy and reigned in my sinful thoughts. Perhaps, he had read my evil mind, or maybe he wanted to give his credit card a break from my hands ...

‘Coffee?’ he asked. ‘You need to ask?’ I said, and as if it is now a part of our very genetic make-up we started looking for a corner table (for three, please) to grab. After a long time in a choc-a-bloc shop, when all I could see was the back of his head, waiting for his name to be mispronounced, he walked back holding two very warm mugs with hot coffee inside. ‘They warmed the mugs too!’ and I could see the glimmer in his eye announcing how this meant we would be sitting, sipping hot coffee longer, maybe discussing our favourite author or our not-so-favourite aunt. 

What did our kid do in the meantime? Why, go around saying hellos and getting his hair ruffled in return, of course. It was a lesson taught well a long time back! 

A couple of days after our latest coffee-session I learnt about Starbucks first ever brand campaign ‘Meet me at Starbucks’. It aims at making people log out of their virtual lives and meet, really meet, to form connections and look for ever-lasting bonds. For a person like me, who carries a real-life #HowWeMet story, this is a campaign that makes me believe in its simple premise that good things, or even very good things, can happen when we get together. 

When you do get together, you realise how memories are formed over shared laughter and smiles, and not through fancy emoticons. You realise how, by switching off from our virtual days, you get to experience life the time-tested way, and that being the real way.

And you also realise how stories can lie waiting to be brewed the moment someone says 'Coffee?'

[This is a sponsored campaign review.]

Wipe 'em clean!

A few days back I shared this on social media; something that I saw on a street in New Delhi:

“So this man was peeing for 15 seconds behind a tree, after which he emerged looking relieved and wiping his hands with his yellow hanky. (I am assuming there was no tap there) He zipped up his jacket right to the top, rubbed both his cheeks as if warming up for something and then crossed the road to reach Bangladesh Embassy (minor detail, not important). He spoke to the gate guard and used his pen to make an entry in the register. He scribbled for a long time, and then the pen went back into the guard's upper pocket. Before walking inside, he shook hands with the guard, probably to thank him for the information he gave him. The gate guard was gleeful at being treated so well. Someone shook hands with him! 

The same hands which were being wiped clean of something just a few minutes back. I wonder if the pen realised? The cheeks, maybe? The hanky, of course, must be dead already. 

Moral of the story - Go sanskari. Say namaste instead! You just never know, no?”

If I knew toilet talk would get me popular, I would make an early morning ablution of it. My update about the ‘travelling hand’ had caught many fancies. A party of men and women gathered in the comments-section to LOL, drop a few ewws, sympathise with the hanky, call men anything from lucky to yucky for using roadsides thus and generally join in the dirty talk. Two goodly men even cared to share the status update, on their pee-free (I suppose) walls. 

Now, while the image of a dirty ‘travelling hand’ is eww it is also very true that lack of time or awareness makes us find quick short-cuts to reach a semblance of cleanliness without a thought spared to those evil troublemakers called kitaanus. Their salivating mandibles wait eagerly for the slightest slip on our ends – putting rotis in a cloth which just wiped the casserole, spray-shining the appliances and then taking the rag to wipe the baby’s toys or even the extreme case of using a hankerchief to clean ‘relieved’ hands, then a sweaty forehead, snotty nose and later food off a toddler’s mouth too.  

Filthy and futile, both. 

That’s where Dettol Multi-Use Wipes should make their debut in your life. There is that dependability on a brand you grew up using (albeit in lesser nice-smelling formats) and that versatility of using it for various purposes, wherever and whenever. The best bit is, they not only protect skin from germs but help keep it germ-free too, without robbing it of its natural protection. As a mother to a Pisces child born with great love for liquids of all kinds, I have found these wipes handy and useful. By the way, they are available online too!

To end on a note that I began on ... I have kept an extra packet in my car’s glove box now. Not just for myself but also for the 15-seconds-men on the road. After all, a filthy handshake, no matter how golden, is also a totally futile one! 

[This is a sponsored product review.]

Book Review – Chronicles of Urban Nomads

Much like any collection of short stories by different authors Readomania’s ‘Chronicles of Urban Nomads’ is a potpourri … no wait, let’s use an image in keeping with the season. ‘Chronicles…’ is like that packet of assorted Xmas tree decorations with 19 items inside. Some are exquisitely novel, like delicate musical instruments with bob-tails and golden threads. An equal number of pieces somewhat usual, like candy sticks, yet nice enough to hold your attention. A few, however and inescapably, don’t add much cheer to your season (say, the Styrofoam balls didn’t last the journey home!) You wished the shopkeeper was more discerning, or maybe he was giving every item a fair chance, in keeping with the spirit of generosity? That’s a lot of Xmas to begin with, but I hope you see what I mean to say about the 19 stories in Readomania’s latest anthology. 

The editor’s laudatory note calls the collection of stories a ‘psychedelic fabric that wraps around you’, marries classic with contemporary, and which carries an impact much like ‘a punch in the solar plexus’. The note also introduces us to the two segments into which the stories are divided – Imagine, and Musings. While the former rests on Personification the latter contains more conventionally written stories. Now, even if we ignore the verb-noun conflict in naming the sections and think ‘Imagination’ and ‘Musings’ would be more like it, we cannot the fact that both sections are well-connected by a thread we call human life. Either the personified objects are showing us their human sides or we have life-size characters ranging from parents to spouses, lovers to friends and even children. Thus, what connect all the stories are human emotions and experiences, lending credence to the ‘Chronicles’ in the title of the book. 

Favouritism first. 

Four stories stood apart from the rest, primarily because I couldn’t tease them into pieces I would have written any other way. Also because, and more importantly so, all four seemed to have elements out of the five of short story writing – character, plot, setting, conflict and theme – used well.

The sari in ‘Confessions of a Benarasi Sari’ by Ayan Pal was ‘woven to wow’. It is a most well-rounded personification. Ayan has seamlessly reflected on to its purple sheen feelings of misgiving and vanity, desire and pride. The sari becomes inseparable from the character of the woman (or any woman) who is about to tie the knot. Eventually, it becomes symbolic of the groom’s mother’s mind too, thus wrapping within its folds a universal experience of womanhood. The story is grounded in a Bengali setting rife with visual details without interfering with the emotional tug of the story. As an aside, I wonder if my wedding Benarasi will also confess that ‘every single glance of satisfaction caused my strands of desire to slowly weave themselves into a pair of wings and then suddenly, I was flying.’ 

‘The Blue Slippers’ by Kirthi Jayakumar is one of the most beautifully written stories in the collection. The streams of consciousness of the object personified (not telling you what) are expressed much like thoughts are formed – sans consideration for proper punctuations. This style of writing can be very impactful, especially when not overdone. The story has two parallel plot-lines which converge in the last bit to leave you contemplative, even as it beautifully renders the sad truth of life that ‘one had to be worse off for the other to be better off’. Much like what the personified object in this very short short-story thinks of itself, ‘The Blue Slippers’ is ‘not your average over-emotional case’. Kirthi does not force emotion out of us readers. The story is told standing apart from the characters and action, a technique very difficult to master. It is showing us a picture but is letting us look for reactions on our own. This is good writing.

Rahul Biswas’s ‘Hopes and Promises’ is written around the ‘thick, sticky net of indifference’ that envelops many marriages of many years. With an eye for minute details without making it wordy, Rahul creates a modern, urban milieu of two couples who are living out their marriages feeling ‘brotherly’ concern towards their spouses, but not much else. Apart from the mature theme, the author very elegantly keeps himself from taking moral sides in this conflict-ridden story, even as he gives due “voice” to each character. An inconclusive end leaves you asking for closed threads yet keeps you fully aware that some stories begun just cannot have an end. What remains is a door hinging around both hope and promise.

‘Finding Mia’ by Roopa Raveendran-Menon will echo in my head and give me goose-bumps for a long, long time to come. It begins on a spine-chilling note, proceeds as mysteriously, nonchalantly disturbs and makes you start when ‘I touch the bark. I hear a shriek. There is blood on my hands. I faint.’ The characters are named Mia, Mina, Myna/Mynah adding to the eerie effect. The whole story comprises short segments which move sans chronology but without obfuscating the plot. In the end, what is most spooky about Mina’s tale is its reality, after ‘the spell breaks’, of discharge from the mental hospital but with stolen pills in the hands. 

Coming in a close second …

There are some stories that I would like to mention for what they have, and the little extra that they could have had. 

‘A Little Nugget of Fear’ by Deepti Menon personifies the most interesting ‘thing’. It is a story of a woman who gets married and then bears a child, written with this specific context in mind. Perhaps it is the only personification which has a prevalent reality to portray, in a story with a similar aim. The ‘thing’ is well-enshrined in the woman ever since her birth, forever being provoked and finally leading to the penultimate scene - one of a vicarious murderer in a fatalistic twist to the tale and which I absolutely loved. However, what diluted the disturbing impact of the story was its stereotypical characterization. (Also, ‘little’ in the title was unnecessary.) 

‘EFIL’ by Bhaswar Mukherjee continued as my favourite story, except when it ended the way it did. It is a story of ‘an apology of a man’ WMD living in a tragi-comic domestic setting and trying his best to draw humour out of it. Until he realizes he wants to look for more meaning than domestic chores endow him with. Using his special gift which brings alive inanimate objects around him, WMD seeks to climb mountains to win over the one ‘lady’ he wants to mount, and who is not his wife. But all the effortless humour and modernist setting blew away with a sand storm the moment Bhaswar brought in a conspiracy theory angle. I wish the story a different end next time.

‘The Wait’ by Akshay Abbhi impresses with the maturity of its premise and the depiction of the very human conflicts that poverty and old age on the brink of death bring with them. It touched me, this very short story, but what saddened me was the absence of a visual appeal and that the personification did not speak its own language. ‘The Last Letter’ by Dipankar Mukherjee is another such story, lacking in the visual but poignant with emotions of a father making his last journey. It’s a grown-up story which makes you feel but disappoints with the way it reveals the only other character, apart from the father, a tad too prematurely.

I would also like to mention Jagadish Nadanalli’s ‘Bachelor and Baby’. An unmarried man treated suspiciously by the neighbours meets an endearingly created 'baby’. The story subtly makes a comment on the discriminatory attitudes of society and how appearances can be deceptive. The simplicity of narration makes the story impactful. Just that, yet again, it ends on a bed of cliché. 

To be fair, I did sit down to list to myself as to why a handful of stories did not find separate mention. I compiled this, almost in the order of appearance – unripe language, simplistic characters, implausible character motivations, strange generalisations, clichéd dialogues, drunk tenses, moral science lessons, plain personifications, old-fashioned/predictable endings, half-baked emotions, hurried narrations and that’s enough use of adjectives by me for this year. Basically, crimes which tend to rear their heads in any heterogeneous group of stories. But did I excuse the punctuation errors scattered everywhere? Not even the jolly season can make me!

‘Chronicles of Urban Nomads’, much like any anthology showcasing first time writers, will generate mixed emotions. But much like any such anthology, I wish ‘Chronicles…’ is read by many. Quality platforms for giving new writers a chance to be read are few, and their importance can never be stressed enough. I do wish that the book was not divided into two clear sections. When we know story 1-9 are personifications, reading can reduce to attempts at guessing who what is talking, making the reader miss out on the other elements. Such shoe-boxing can lead to greater undue comparisons too. Of course, if you are smart and realize this soon enough, like me, you will interleave stories from the two sections. 

You must read this book, my way or your way!

'Chronicles of Urban Nomads' is a Readomania publication, 2014

[This review was commissioned by the publisher. All views are my own.]