A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

May 2020

Cocooned in our small little worlds yet living through the most precarious and awful times – this has got to be a first in the collective memory of the whole wide world. Untouched by the footsteps of migrant workers in the hot sun we rave and rant on social media. And as always what helps us to retain our sanity in moments like this are words. Our own words and words from loved ones but even more than that, words from gifted writers who spin stories out of universal experiences, from thoughts and ideas half-formed in our minds.

Simon & Schuster India is happy to bring to you short stories by the inimitable Shobhaa De as she captures the fragile zeitgeist of the pandemic in her own unique way – through stories that don’t provide an escape into la la land but rather stories of love that will make you sometimes smile, sometimes frown but at all times understand the subterranean world of shifting human emotions. The author, and her stories, don’t shy away from the tremulous uncertainties of the world as we know but rather help us to confront and understand it all, just a little bit better.

There is an exhausted woman who wishes her husband saw her as something more than an outlet for his sexual needs, there is a weaver in Benaras who has a magical relationship with his loom which changes as the lockdown proceeds and there is a young married couple who grow increasingly disenchanted with each other as the lockdown shows no signs of letting up. Read these stories and more, in this moving and relatable collection of love stories by Shobhaa De.

I hope all of you enjoy reading the stories in this anthology and remember in these difficult times to be kind to yourselves, to the people you meet in the pages of this book and to those in your life and in the world outside.