Author Description

This collection has twelve captivating short stories. Stories like WITCH and THE CLAW foreground the social evils like pasting a label of a witch on an issueless woman and the exploitation of poor and helpless children by coercively engaging them in several criminal and illegal activities. A SONG FOR A SLAUGHTERER centres round the tragic life of the protagonist Karim who has entered into the meat-selling vocation more by default than by choice, and his futile effort to hide his woe under a fake joviality. BLACKIE is another moving and poignant tale of the love between a human child and a puppy. A mother with a deep-rooted aversion for dogs was forced rather by an emotional need to see her only son happy, to shelter a stray dog in the garage of her house. THE WHITE CROW is in a way an attempt to explore the subconscious through the creation of a dream sequence. FIRE FESTIVAL unravels the ugly and reprehensible caste-discrimination prevailing in the society. It also exposes the brute sadism in man often kept concealed under a veneer of civility. It is a tragic tale of a crippled young man of a lower caste who was thrown alive into the raging fire by a bunch of boys of higher caste families. The dramatic and eerie beginning of the story BRAMHA-DEMON that hints at the reality of the uncanny presence of some discontented spirit actually develops to be the tale of an illicit love affair between a Brahmin young man, the spoilt son of a wealthy landlord of the village and a lower caste woman Sushie who happens to be the wife of Daiya, a farmhand employed by his father. GRANDFATHER'S NOTEBOOK narrates the tale of a young girl sentenced to a lifelong remorse for not being able to fulfil the dying wish of her beloved grandfather who had to compromise with his writing career for providing a living to his family. THE DEAL is the story of Debadutta, a low-paid correspondent in a newspaper office and his difficult dilemma. An honest newspape