Unlikely Tails - Book Review

The blurb, the initial pages of Mani Padma's debut book Unlikely Tails announce that it is a collection of seventeen stories. However there are eighteen stories in this book. Two stories are numbered as five in the index and in the interior and that makes the eighteen stories seventeen. This blunder for sure makes a bad first impression.

Feeling of rejection, loneliness and death permeates most of the stories. The opening story Prince Charming is about the fluttering of heart of a young woman when she meets the man of her dreams. I really liked the second story in the book Eight Days with Sushil. In this story a depressed girl meets an old friend who lightens up her dead life. I liked the format which the author chooses for narrating this story. Its end though is quite shocking.

The story Harmony demonstrates how music can bring two unhappy souls together. Pammi's Escort Service is about how we all have the money but lack company. Broken heart is an interesting tale where an old woman tells how she broke a broken heart's heart again. Date with future is all about the games that girls play.

Man, Woman and capitulates the dynamics of a seasoned marriage. The story Sabjiwallah falls into the horror genre. The story Breakfast opens at a breakfast table. It is about a woman locked in a loveless marriage, who is drawn towards an out of marriage relationship. In Pursuit of Fame is a multilayered story about parental pressure on children who are forced into reality shows. I liked this story for the manner in which it welds reality with fiction.

Bhaavya delves into the mind of a mentally unsound woman. The Perfect Plan revolves around infidelity and a perfectly planned murder. Mamma's house shows how attachment to places changes with time. Dulliance deals with bride seeing ceremonies, customary for arranged marriages in India. Keep the Change again deals with issues of marriage and money. The last story in this collection titled The End tries to underline that in any given choice you have the power to chose your reaction. Again the author uses a unique format to weave her story.

What I liked about this book is that the writing is clean. These stories are projected as stories about as to what goes into the minds of women. While some stories indeed relate to this theme, some like Sabjiwallah are out of sync with the theme. Most of the stories are prosaic, too abstract. But yet if you want to read something really different, you may go for this book.