Collected Stories. Review on Collected Stories 2 - Shashi Deshpande

Just sometime back I finished reading ‘Collected stories’ written by Shashi Deshpande. Since I do not have to remember the whole story unlike in a novel where I face the danger of forgetting it if read after a long interval, I chose to read short stories. One of the few writers who would bring every kind of emotion in just one collection. The short stories suffer from repetition of stories…however, she was careful not to repeat them. Most of them are based on incidents, the complex human relationships and emotions. Each story compels you to think, about it, later …at least for sometime.

I liked ‘the cruelty game’ where children play games on a girl …not knowing how much hurt they are causing to her. There are others which make the novel special. In one story, Draupadi and her thoughts about when she wonders if the future spells war or not? Madhu the Gen X girl who is careless about herself and has a I-give-a-damn attitude till her father is hospitalised. Or a mother who prefers being in her home instead of staying with her well-settled daughters.

The stories are anecdotal in nature, they usually take place over a day or even a space of few hours, but they address powerful issues that influence our lives everyday, they make a lot of sense!! The joy of reading a novel is experienced not only when we flip pages out of curiousity but also when we read it completely and then the after effects of the novel makes us form an opinion and leave a feel good feeling. Shashi Deshpande’s novel promises to bring the same!!! I give it 9 of ten rating.