There are totally eight short stories in this collection, organized
as five in part one and 3 in part two. Every time I completed a story, I
wondered if that was the best story of the collection. They get better and
better, and the second part with all the three stories interconnected, and yet
stand separated ended up being the Grand Finale!
The title story is about the daughter-dad bonding, and made
such a beautiful start. It was very nostalgic and took me back to days of my
pregnancy, and my Dad. Most Indian stories trace the relationship with the dad
as either too formal (authors my age or older) or too informal (younger authors).
In this case too it is too formal, and kept me wondering how I would be
responding to my Dad during each of the encounters. Dad is the only person I contradict
often, sometimes even just for the sake of contradicting, and the man takes it like
a compliment.
The book moves on to the story of a married woman’s relationship with a
stranger, who ends up just another stranger, onto the story of a couple who
eventually lose their intimacy after kids and makes it up for it in a school,
to the sister who fosters guilt about her brother’s addiction and onto the guy
who gets into a tangle with his roomies breakup.
The second part is more like a
novella with three chapters. One with her story of him, and the other with his
story and memoir of her, and finally ending up with his disappearance or a
mysterious appearance(?).
I loved Ms. Lahiri’s Lowland, and her style gets better with
short stories. I just can’t find a better word to express my emotions, and
would rather say that this is the best book that I have read this year, and I
am a bundle of emotions this minute. <3
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