Author: Siddharth Chowdhury
Publisher: Srishti
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 156
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187075988
Description
Patna and Delhi are twin cities, Separated by 700 miles. The stories in this collection reflect the sociocultural ramifications of such a geographical anomaly, on a generation whose dreams are often cleaved in half between the cramped Mezzanine bed sitters in Kingsway camp and the dilapidated mansions of Kadam Kuan, Patna.
These are with a few exception, stories of youth, love and loneliness and the attendant joy, alienation and heart break which comes along as a package deal.
A veritable Pandora’s box of a collection where one never knows what one is going to find next: Two gallants go for a Volkar Schlondorff movie and on their way back get some reality instruction; a high school teacher with the right stuff, hooked on Ghalib tries to emulate his hero; elsewhere another high school teacher, this time with the wrong stuff gets his comeuppance; two adolescents, troubled and withdrawn take the first tentative steps towards love; a young woman on her twenty-fourth birthday discovers there is not much difference between her daschund and her boyfriend; a young man finds salvation in omelettes; another in Martin Scorsese; an abandoned short story writer with a blocked soul; a retired Don of literature who starts reading Byron again; a security guard with a lit fuse snaking upto his mind and more. In the end a realization dawns that like Godard’s Partick every boy is called Ritwik.
Since the short story writer is a subaltern of the literary world, all the stories in this darkly comic and often whimsical collection thrive on a steady diet of subversion and dry wit. Required reading for the bibliophile, the cinephile and the paedophile alike.
Contents
Homeward Bound
Seraphim and Cherubim
Magical Omelettes at Kaake Da Dhaba
Outlaws
The Women
The Adolescents
A Scene from Class Struggle in Patna
The Leader of Men
Hard Boiled
Will You Be My Valentine?
The Loneliness of the Short Story Writer
24
The Writer’s Wife
Anecdotage
River of Dreams
Diksha at St. Martin’s