What comes as something of a relief is that none of the ten stories in Kleptomania, feature the angst and anguish of Indian womanhood…. Instead, we have mostly urban and savvy women like the author herself.

Short stories in different hues, a harrowing 'life behind the veil' tale, an exploration of emotional bonds between people…Sherna Gandhy analyses the latest reads in the market

A NEAT TURN OF PHRASE

There is one thing that can be said with certainty about Manjula Padmanabhan: there is nothing clichéd about the characters or themes of the 10 short stories in one of her recent works, Kleptomania. Just as her cartoon strip, that used to appear in The Sunday Observer in the '80s, was unlike any Indian cartoon strip, not least because it had a young female, the Suki, as the central character. But to be different is not a virtue in itself, and while Padmanabhan can pull it off in some stories, others are not quite so successful.

What comes as something of a relief is that none of the ten stories feature the angst and anguish of Indian womanhood (except perhaps for Farida in Beads), a theme that far too many Indian women writers are addicted to. Instead, we have mostly urban and savvy women like the author herself in the semi-fictional Morning Glory in East of Kailash, where her bizarre household consists of two gays, their adopted son, three dogs and a hijra cook.

EXPLORING CULTURES AND EMOTIONS

Author, Jaishree Misra's third novel, Afterwards, also see-saws between two places and cultures - Trivandrum and London - but this is a story about the emotional bonds (or lack of them) between people rather than about cultural differences.

Most of the story is told after Maya's death in an accident, as a devastated Rahul tries to hold his life together and decide little Anjali's future. Misra is good at conveying the sense of loss that pervades the novel and that finally leads to the beginning of the healing process.

The book has an appealing hero in Rahul, who is most women's idea of what a man should be - sensitive, caring, intelligent.