Read The Stories


List of Characters:


Bavani: A 34 year old writer (actually, she's going to turn 34 this International Water Day: 22/03/2024, Friday) whose debut novel Every Day is a Holiday won the prestigious Cocker Prize in the year 2019. Bavani, like many an average Indian middle-class child, did not grow up in a house full of books. She trained to be an engineer. It was in her early twenties that she developed a deep yearning for Literature. (Read this excerpt from Tom Tiddler's Ground to know more about that deeply desolate journey.)  Every Day is a Holiday has been attached with such epithets as "prophetic, symphonic, and incendiary". To those familiar with Bavani's life and her stories, she calls to the mind the portrait of the emaciate Buddha–


– someone who denounced the platform beneath his feet and went all the way down to the bottom of the emptiness and rose again like a butterfly to give us all some colour and light – a privilege hitherto reserved solely for the male of the species! But when we speak of this "feminine landscape" that is looming before us, are we not conscious of a non-duality between flippancy and wisdom? Maybe this is what Bavani represents. 

Lakshmi: Her mother. Lakshmi is a retired maths teacher.

Rathi: A dog that rescued Bavani.

Shruthi: Rathi's daughter. 

Bala: Bavani's father. He's a retired engineer. 


Megha [name changed]: Bavani's friend. Her mother and Bavani's mother were colleagues at a woman's college in South Bangalore. Megha was a final year student–BA psychology–when she had a very mysterious experience! she had a two hour chat with a pair of giant African snails: a chat that broached into areas of male sexuality hitherto left untouched by human thought! 


Arundati: Bavani's friend at Chicago. It is she who had initiated Bavani into the world of Literature and the Arts. She died mysteriously of asphyxiation. 


Prahalad: A very mysterious character because for all we know he might not be real – only a figment of our protagonist Bavani's writerly imagination. Anyway, he lives in South Delhi (and later moves to Bangalore after he has a minor scuffle with the law). He lives with his parents. 

Rukmini: His lesbian sister. She is a leading legal-journalist. 

Mani: His father. A retired DRDO engineer from Madurai. 

Athirai: His mother; she's a minor Carnatic musician. 


Nikita Nambi: A dance prodigy. She is a major Indian dancer who's left her own mark in the world of Indian dance-drama. 

Ameya Nambi: Her daughter. A struggling artist. 

Dora: Their late adopted Labrador. 

Bessie: Their dog.

Byron: Their dog.

Nila: A white and black puppy rescued by Ameya. 

Kriya Nambi: Ameya's twin sister. A major stage director and model. She is married to an American Ugandan musician and lives in New York. 


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The Stories (classified according to the genre into which they might be best fitted):


Motherhood              

                                   Lesbian Fiction

                                                                     Male Sexuality

                                                                                                       Covid 19

                                                                                                                           Bildungsroman

                                                                                                       Polytonal fiction

                                                                       Greek Mythology 

                               Daughterhood 


      wait for more...

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