A part of the Ratna Translation Series, this collection of fifteen short stories by Telugu writer Chandra Latha speaks of a world in transition, uneasily accepting and getting swayed by capitalism’s glossy goods. The stories have been published in Telugu from 1993 till the present, although most of them were written in the 2000s.
Many of the stories are sharply relevant today. ‘White Paper’, written in 1994 about a young girl who topped her State exams, and is singled out from her class to receive the question paper of an exam well in advance to secure a top rank again, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the NEET and NET question paper leaks of 2024. The trope of burdening children to shoulder the aspirations of parents and institutes is not restricted to simply this story.