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Doppelgänger:Short Stories
Set in urban, middle class India, these 18 stories, defying easy categorization, are a true miscellany, reflecting the uncertain, illogical and vibrant nature of our times. Here boundaries between the real and the phantasmal blur: malls become haunted places, airports and golf clubs are the crossroads where past and present selves meet and greet. Chronicling the isolation, insecurities,hidden angst, subtle passion and secret longings that underlie ordinary lives and relationships, these stories weaves in themes as diverse as memory and the emotional residue it produces, the elusiveness of identity, the rigours of role play, the convolutions of a double life, the complexity of shadow wives. By turns sweet, sad, poignant, funny and mysterious, they draw us into their separate and compact worlds and linger with us awhile.
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The Kaunteyas
‘Death is important to a man, but survival is more important to a woman.’ With a split destiny ruling her life, Kunti, given away at birth, leads a hard but uneventful existence in her foster-father’s home. At fourteen she is pressed into the service of the temperamental sage Durvasa who grants her a boon. Its first use, however, only brings her adversity and a shameful secret. With marriage to Pandu, Kunti dreams of a better future, but a curse makes him leave the throne of Hastinapur to his sibling, the blind Dhritarashtra, and retreat to the forest. The births of the five Pandavas rekindle Kunti’s hopes of returning to Hastinapur, but these are destroyed once again when Pandu dies suddenly. Kunti journeys to the kingdom, no longer its queen but a widow, a dependant as are her sons. She must now take up the task of guiding them through the long struggle to get their inheritance, a struggle made harder by the discovery that the illegitimate child she had abandoned long ago is alive and a sworn enemy of the Pandavas. Recasting the Mahabharata from the viewpoint of Kunti, The Kaunteyas replaces the idealized mother figure with a fully three-dimensional woman, providing new insights into the epic.