3 Review(s)

Shades of Love and other stories from India Book is a collection of short stories set in Indias pre and post mobile phone days. Here the characters are drawn from the Indian social milieu and they come face to face with the reader: In the backdrop of an ancient temple ritual, now defunct, called dedicating girls to local deities, a young man hears his mother say she conceived him in sin. A boy falls in and out of love, as watched by a widower who finds no clue for the boys disappearance. Burying into each other and talking in whispers a pair of lovers spend a night long journey by taxi. In a long monologue a girl pines for a man she has not met. Destiny writes the same fate lines in different script, a mother tells her daughter abandoned by her husband. First there is darkness, an empty heart, into which a beam of love is lighted, a girl confesses her growing affection for a boy. When you win a girls heart, you lose yours, a lover draws a theory. A daughter is pushed to the extreme when her mother rejects all marriage proposals on the pretext that horoscopes do not match Behind this assorted group of men and women, placed in lifes highly unpredictable situations, there is an element of subtle irony. The author records how human relationships are bound by love and affection or torn down by separation.The reader is mesmerized by the poetry of storytelling techniques. A wholesome treat for fiction lovers!