If It Is Sweet

I happened to chance upon this book at a local book store, and I've stopped online briefly to let you know about it. I was looking for a short story anthology after having read lengthy anthologies, and I found Mridula Koshy's work to be quite fresh and refreshing.

This is the author's debut anthology of short stories and has been received fairly in and around the literary circles. Born and brought up in Delhi, she migrated to the United States at the age of fifteen, where she was involved with radical trade unionism as a full time activist. She took to writing after returning to Delhi four years ago.

Her stories reflect her struggle as a second class citizen in the United States and portray the chaotic and complex life of Delhi’s inhabitants. Her motivation seems to come from two aspects - the lives of Delhi's working class people unwinding mostly through its streets and her first hand experiences as a trade union worker in the United States where she was exposed to upheaval, complexities, and a myriad of complications in people’s lives, not to mention social divide on race and class lines.

You will appreciate the writer's talent in her seventeen stories that this book contains like Jeans, When a Child was a Child, Not Known, Companion, and Large Girl. The Good Mother deals with single motherhood where the protagonist picks up a younger lover from Rishikesh on her way back to Delhi. It's a good read, albeit experimental and tentative in parts, as it grapples with human emotions and inner psychology.

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