Of aches and elements

Shanta Gokhale spins tales of nostalgia and vulnerabilities in her new book

- FAIZAL KHAN

SIX YEARS AFTER the publication of her memoir, One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body, award-winning author Shanta Gokhale is back with a collection of short stories. The Way Home, which has 12 stories, continues Gokhale’s piercing probe into the vulnerabilities of life.

Narrated in her style infused with an abundance of wit and allure, as witnessed in the engaging episodes of her memoir that dealt with the travails and tensions of the human body, The Way Home expands the aches and elements that run the mills of human spirit.

The collection is a wide canvas of stories, each illuminating the volatility and enigma that define and disrupt human lives and conditions. Gokhale’s chorus of characters imbibe the unpredictability of the present and a longing for the past in such stories as that of a theatre group in the middle of preparations for their next play, a doctor who retires to care for his dying wife, a company executive finding a new way forward through an old incident, a young man caught between his caste and commitments, and a couple of septuagenarians musing on Mohammed Rafi and the lost beats of love.