Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told is an ocean resounding narrative themes and linguistic expressions that spread across centuries.
Living in Air, a collection of seventeen stories by Ipshita Chanda, opens with the story ‘Wings’, an ode to the 18th century Urdu poet Mah Laqa Bai Chanda from Hyderabad
Word-induced silence makes witnessing both horrifying and lyrical, and it alters the understanding of the universe of emotions more profoundly, bringing in multi-layered, untold, exotic moments of epiphany.
Chakravarty’s Introduction comes with another poem in which she writes about angsanas that bloomed on trees and orioles ‘magicked out of the unseen leaves’. To her, they stand for the innocence of childhood.
The appeal of the novel lies in its conception as a microcosm where at the intrinsic level is a noticeable absence of an omnipotent author dictating mandates of life for his characters.
The plot revolves around Revathi’s marriage to Ravi, an auto driver living in a slum that houses erstwhile refugees from Burma who settled down in Tamil Nadu.