Of Faultlines Old And New
Rimi B. Chatterjee
TELL ME A LONG, LONG STORY: 12 MEMORABLE STORIES FROM INDIA by Mini Krishnan Aleph Book Company, 2017, 336 pp., 699
December 2017, volume 41, No 12

There is a kind of anger that is necessary in the world as it is right now. It is an anger that sticks to the truth like tar to your shoe on a hot day. It is the anger that powers the best storytellers, who not only stick to the truth but sing while they do it. This is a popular stand currently, because it is powerful. We live in a time where it is possible, as chaos shifts under our feet, to break the rules we have been fed and speak out, even if only for an instant. As long as we still have the means to distribute ideas to a sizeable section of the population, we can continue to comment on and criticize the way things are being arranged by the people who think it is their job to tell us what to do. All the storytellers in this collection do this. They follow characters whose lives are trembling on the brink of some enormous transformation, characters who may or may not see the abyss opening beneath their feet, but always figures who warn and illuminate us.

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