Babuspeak and Other Stories

Sudhansu Mohanty's sensitive stories convey intricate human relationships, yet they resonate with emotion and nostalgia the basis of these seventeen short stories. The tete a tete of two senior bureaucrats captures the corrupt, nepotistic opportunism of Indian Babudom a chance rendezvous with her former lover leads to nuanced possibilities in Suvra's mind when reality suddenly jolts her Shiela's anguished life seems to find solace upon serendipitous spotting of black moles in her little toes the benign diagnosis of a life threatening disease brings out the remorse tucked inside the patient's heart of a failed arranged marriage, a tele talk encapsulates how wrongs are righted in the murky world of bureaucracy divorced Malaika's dream cross stitches a passionate longing for the flesh and a man's dying wish conveyed to his wife to let the younger son light his funeral pyre affects all family equations beyond repair.