Book Review Title: Silent Realities Author: Ranjan Kaul Publisher: Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2016 Pages: 214 It is not an easy job to fabricate arresting stories out of very ordinary characters. The best feature of Ranjan Kaul’s short stories is that they engage us from the first line to the last. We get glued to the characters. There’s a rare kind of suspense that Kaul creates in his stories. It is not the suspense we find in thrillers and other categories that usually make use of suspense. It is rather the suspense that life carries inextricably with it particularly in the case of vulnerable characters. The reason why Kaul’s stories fascinate us is that the characters are all taken from the next street or the next door. Ashalata who makes use of her little daughter to steal ladies’ handbags in the first story, The Handbag , Lallan who becomes a tragic victim of a corrupt and insensitive socio-political system [ Lallan ]and Hari...
Cerebrate and Celebrate