Stories Varied – A Book of Short Stories

This is a collection of the author’s short stories that deals with women's dilemmas in the Indian social milieu accompanied with unique denouements. 

While 'Ilaa's Ire' contrasts woman's lot of the day with her eminence in the Vedic Age, '201' Qualms" depicts her predicament, torn between personal loyalty and citizen's responsibility. 

As "?" addresses woman's marital stress in an alien land, 'Cupid's Clue' is about her acting on rebound in her native place. 

Even as 'Autumn Love' lets woman discover the marital void in her life, 'A Touchy Affair' makes her amenable to her man's other woman. 

Just as 'Love's How's That' inflames woman's old flame, 'A Hearty Turn' brings her innate lesbian leanings to the fore. 

If 'Love Jihad' bridges lovers' religious divide with a secular plank, 'Tenth Nook' creates her marital gulf on the materialistic ground. 

While 'Eleventh Hour' is about woman's lust for love, 'Twelfth Tale' underscores her zest for power.

 This free ebook, in multiple formats, is in the public domain in umpteen ebook sites. 

Foreword 

With the addition of ‘Prey on the Prowl’ to my body of work, I thought the accretion was over without short story genre. Not that I didn’t try my hand at that, indeed I did, but finding the output wanting, I didn’t refill my pen again.

Maybe, literature was keen to have my contribution in this fictional sphere as well, so it seems, as beginning from July 2015, Vinita Dawra Nagia came up with “Write India Campaign of Times of India”. Her idea was to let the aspiring writers build their stories on  the ‘prompts’  provided  by  eleven  of  India’s popular  authors  starting  with  Amish Tripathi. 

When I penned Ilaa’s Ire on Amish’s prompt, it felt like I had crossed the unassailable frontier,  and  thereafter,  for  the next  ten  months,  thanks  to  the  prompts by Chetan Bhagat,  Aswin  Sanghi,  Ravi  Subramanian,  Preeti  Shenoy,  Tuhin  A.  Sinha,  Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta, Madhuri Banarjee, Jaisree Misra and Anita Nair, I had experienced the joy of short story writing. 

That  in  the  end,  I  could  pen  my  Twelfth  Tale,  sans  any  prompting,  perhaps,  is  a testimony to the success of Vinita’s Write India Campaign.

Story 1, Ilaa’s Ire 

‘I am sick of this!’ she grunted loudly, dangling her weary legs in the languid waters.  

'Why not,'  she thought, 'am I not a victim of the unmaking of the mores of yore that brought woman's life to this pass?' 

Gazing  at  the  Sun,  setting  by  then,  she  felt  it  symbolized  the  loss  of  sheen,  of woman’s high noon of life, pictured by her grandmother in bedtime tales.

‘If only things remained the same,’ she began to speculate about her would-have- been  life, ‘I would  have  gone to  a gurukula  to  become a  satyavadini  at  fifteen,  and who knows, I might have blossomed  into a Maitreyi of the day, if not a modern day Ghosa.  Moreover,   I  would  have  been   entitled  to  choose  a  man  I  fancied  in  a swayamvara,  oh,  what  an  appetizing  prospect  it  is. Won’t  that  prove  our  ancestors were wise enough to realize that woman’s liberation lay in her right over her body to entrust it to the man she coveted? But how ignoramus the progeny of the wise have become to ordain woman to remain illiterate and live in ignorance! How she’s given away  in  marriage,  to  a  man  of  her  father’s  choosing,  lo,  when  she  hasn’t  even matured! What else is woman nowadays if not man’s vassal? How sad that women of Sauviragram, or Paithan  for  that  matter,  can’t dare dream  about  things,  which  their ancestors took for granted. Maybe, same is the case with fair sex everywhere in  the once fair land named after my namesake.’ 

As  though  to  bring  to  the  fore  her  dreams  gone  sour,  the  flow  under  her  feet picked up stream. ...

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