Stories of Us by Bobby Sachdeva was sent to me for a review and this is a paid post. I love reading short stories and this one seemed right up my alley.

Title: Stories of Us

Genre: Short Stories

Publication: Pan Macmillan India

Author: Bobby Sachdeva

In his own words, Bobby Sachdeva is an Indian business man with a penchant for writing stories focused on social issues. He lives in Amritsar and owns a film production business. This is his debut novel.

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Synopsis:

Stories of Us is a collection on 41 short stories, each focused around a common social issue that we are all aware of. Each and every issue picked up in this collection is something we are all familiar with and acknowledge. All the stories are written in a simplistic manner, making it easier to understand the core idea.

Superstitions, belief in Babas, horoscopes and the inclusion of Vastu Shastra in building planning are some of the most common things that each one of us have faced in our life at one point or another. The relationship of parent and children; how sometimes the child becomes the parent is another common facet of our life. Then there are issues of taxation, governance and changes in rulings that we have all come to recognize and fear at times.

Through all these stories, the common man is underlined very clearly. These are indeed the Stories of Us and I have a few favorites from this collection of 41 tales.

The Third Gender deals very uniquely with the lives of children born under this stigma and how society perceives them. They are forced to live a very shoddy life by virtue of their birth.

A Birth on the Road shows us how status minded we can be, even to go as far as being inhumane to another human being.

GST deals emphatically with the problems of small time business owners who cannot afford to lose out customers to tax formalities.

Property talks about parents spoiling their only child and then being at his mercy in their old age. The love of the child is what leads them to their end.

The Theft is a hard look at how we treat our hired help and in turn what they expect from us or think of us.

Each story is centered around one such issue that ails are society or humanity and is an effort to find a solution for it. It also calls awareness to them and hopefully that would help to mitigate them. Perhaps by reading such stories, we could be instilled with kindness and generosity in thought and action.

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Lasting Impression on me:

The stories are written in an extremely simplistic manner with hardly any character development. In some instances the stories themselves had a very abrupt ending. The Third Gender is one story that stood out for me in this entire collection.

While I enjoyed the idea behind each story, I wasn’t drawn into the writing at all. The writing style reminded me of my school days textbooks that used to have lessons written in this style. Some times brevity can be bliss but in the case of these stories, I wished for more.

My rating:

I have rated this collection a 3 stars out of 5 and would recommend it to people who enjoy reading short stories. The writing is simple and the stories are a quick read. The illustrations accompanying each story help to liven up the stories further. Since each story revolves around issues familiar to the Indian mentality, the readers will be able to find a great connect with them.

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