3 Review(s)

From the hundreds of short stories written by Gangadhar Gadgil, this representative collection has fourteen in English translation. There is fable and fantasy, humour and poignancy, sentiment and cynicism, sharp comment on society and human behaviour that is tender as well as brutally exploitative. Every character lives and breathes in Gadgil’s stories whether they struggle in the middle-class chawls, crowded restaurants and streets of suburban Mumbai, or even on the beach at Mahabalipuram. His language is playful, acerbic, alliterative, sometimes even poetic, never effusive, always clear and precise. Gadgil’s stories are relevant, long after they were first published in Marathi, since the changing social structure, the pace of life, the tension in interpersonal relationships and the consequent angst that he depicts, remain essentially the same.