Sampurna Chattarji's 'Dirty Love' is a sequence of stories set in the restless swirl of a Bombay where dream-shuttles speed through the rain and men fall prey to dirty love. Reeking of sewers, fish markets, slaughtered meat, and peopled with loners, misfits and drifters, these tales prise open the surface of everyday existence. We encounter a mother inexplicably estranged from her infant son, an Insectboy with a gift for fantasy, Night Rat Killers who prowl through the dark depths of the metropolis, and umbrellas that find refuge in their very own heaven. Gritty and surreal, tender and terrifying, these stories, together with the chorus of voices running through them, convey the energy and ennui that lie at the secret heart of modern urban life.
The author, Sampurna Chattarji, joined IBNLive readers for an interaction on the her book 'Dirty Love'.
Q. When is your book hitting the stands, ma'am? Asked by: pallavi
...
more
06:15 PM, May 17, 2013
If there is one short-story writer I would like to meet and know more about, it would be Alice Munro. Her skill and magnificence of the craft have always left me speechless. She writes without caring, without knowing and without expecting or so it seems every time I read her collection of stories. There is something about them which maybe cannot be defined. It can only be felt by the...
05:56 PM, May 08, 2013
The mix of stories could not have been better in this collection. ...
07:19 PM, Mar 15, 2013
The book as the title suggests is a collection of short stories, seventeen to be precise and spread across three sections. So the sections are on love, friendship and modern-age fairy tales. ...
07:49 PM, Feb 15, 2013
Alice Munro writes and if you are ardent fan, you ensure that you read the book in almost a sitting, cherish it, reread it and only then you feel satiated. This always happens to me when I read a collection of stories by Munro. I have to reread it for solid and sometimes inexplicable reasons. There isn't any other way. That is my personal connect with her, as there are...
04:07 PM, Nov 05, 2012
Boats on Land looks at India's northeast 'uniquely' and its people against a larger historical canvas - the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the missionaries. The Boats on Land quietly captures our fragile, awkward place in the world. Written by Janice Pariat, a writer from Shillong, currently, studying History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her work...
06:29 PM, Oct 30, 2012
I think we constantly judge things, people and ideas, because we do not understand them. Because they seem different to us. I guess somewhere down the line the same has happened with a few places in Eastern India. The rest of the country does not understand them and they remain alienated to a large extent, hence judged. This was one of the random thoughts I had while reading, 'Boats on...
12:27 PM, Oct 29, 2012
The minute I heard that Junot Diaz was coming out with a new book, I could not stop myself from dreaming about the time when I would read it, back to back. That is exactly what I did with his latest book, a collection of short-stories, more like a fragmented novel more like it - 'This Is How You Lose Her'. The title of the book was enough to get...
05:57 PM, Oct 09, 2012
New Delhi: Actress Deepti Naval has joined the legion of Indian writers with her maiden collection of short stories. 'The Mad Tibetan: Stories From Then And Now', which was launched in Mumbai by actor Amitabh Bachchan, will be released in the capital by director Muzaffar Ali Nov 12. Naval made her debut with the movie, 'Ek Bar Phir' in 1979 and featured in a string of hits like 'Chashme Buddoor',...
01:43 PM, Nov 09, 2011
In the corridors of Indian politics and in the high-performance business sweat shops the gender order is slowly shifting in favour of power divas - the women achievers. Sample an alchemist. Sugar queen Rajshree Pathy turned a barren stretch of land in Andipatti and Theni district of Tamil Nadu to a lush sugarcane country more than two decades ago. Growing sugar in the fallow stretch of Andipatti was tough. The...
01:12 PM, Nov 02, 2011
New Delhi: Quercus, a young, vibrant, internationally successful and award-winning publisher of fiction, non-fiction and children's books.has acquired two books by debut author Prajwal Parajuly. Jon Riley, editor-in-chief, bought UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) for 'The Gurkha's Daughter: Stories' and 'Land Where I Flee', a novel, for a respectable five-figure sum from Susan Yearwood at the Susan Yearwood Literary Agency. 'The Gurkha's Daughter: Stories', which chronicles the lives of...
07:02 PM, Oct 05, 2011
Shimla: The seat of deity Kotlu Devta is trusted by locals for disposing of domestic, social and criminal disputes. They believe the complainant just has to hammer a nail into the pillar of the temple and the offender confesses his crime. Surprised? The practice is still prevalent in Baghi village of the Balichowki area in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh. Such tales form a part of the state tourism department's...
08:11 PM, Aug 26, 2011
I am a great fan of short stories. I love reading them for pleasure and also sometimes wanting to know more and read between the lines. Every writer I feel needs to explore the form of the short story in order to become a better writer. That is just my personal opinion though. For me short story writing has come of age and has come a long way " from...
06:53 PM, Aug 09, 2011
There are boundaries between countries and maybe the boundaries exist for a reason, or do they? This question haunted me long after reading the book. There are very few books like these that leave you with lingering thoughts. Thoughts that do not seem to stop. I am often disturbed when I read about territorial issues and added to that communal violence topped with whose land is this? kind of sentiment....
03:12 PM, Apr 13, 2011
Divya Dubey's collection of short stories deal with a world of contrasts. ...
04:08 PM, Jun 30, 2010
The Indian wave of writing isn't just about Vikram Seth. There's a generation of new writers, waiting in the wings. ...
12:20 PM, Sep 13, 2006
