3 Review(s)

Urban Shots: Bright Lights is an anthology of compelling stories set in urban India. Summary Of The Book Urban Shots: Bright Lights is a collection of stories written by various Indian bloggers and writers like Ahmed Faiyaz, R. Chandrasekar, and Malathi Jaikumar. The collection contains a total of 29 stories contributed by 21 authors. It has been edited by Paritosh Uttam, a popular writer himself. The stories offer colorful and thought-provoking glimpses of the intriguing labyrinth that forms urban India. The highlights of the stories are the myriad interesting characters that they present - young, old, happy, talkative, infatuated, insecure, secretive, rebellious, and submissive. A seven-year-old girl who wishes to get married, a ten-year-old one stalked by painful memories of her mother’s death, a gabby filmmaker-turned-cab-driver, a nosy neighborhood lady, an unsuccessful salesman, a besotted 27-year-old, an ill-tempered retiree, a submissive wife who has suffered enough, a struggling artist, a grumpy literature-loving teacher - the collection features numerous characters, the likes of which readers are sure to have encountered in their own lives at some point of time. Through narratives that are happy, sad, dreamy, bitter, funny, and magical, the stories cover the entire spectrum of human emotions. From romance to suspense and from drama to comedy, the collection offers a little bit of everything that makes contemporary urban India the colorful complexity that it is. Urban Shots: Bright Lights was published in 2012 by Grey Oak Publishers, India. It went on to receive highly positive reviews for its vibrant snapshots of daily life in urban India. About Paritosh Uttam Paritosh Uttam is an Indian techie and author. He has written one book, Dreams In Prussian Blue. He has edited this anthology and contributed a story to it as well. His writing focuses on the various aspects of urban life. Uttam was born and brought up in Trivandrum, Kerala. He was schooled in Trivandrum and later in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics engineering. He followed it up with a master’s in System Science and Automation from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Apart from his love for writing, Uttam also pursues table tennis and photography as hobbies. He lives in Pune, with his wife Smita and son Palash.