“Apart from being a well-known publisher, David Davidar is also a novelist, editor and anthologist. He has been an attentive reader of Indian fiction from the time he was a teenager…..”
Read an article in The Hindu’s Sunday, Arts, Culture, and Entertainment titled “Not so tall tales”. I chuckled at the title and moved on to read the interview. I was sold on the third line, “From Khushwant Singh, Munshi Premchand, Chugtai and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer and Ruskin Bond to…”. I knew I had to get it. My search for such a compilation of Indian short stories consisting of writers across India had been going on for a while and without any satisfactory results.
I made sure to keep the paper aside, in a place where it would be safe, and even succeeded at it for a while, before losing it, and not even realising it was gone for months. Struck with an epiphany, one fine day, I remembered about this book, faintly recalling its name. I googled it with whatever snippets I could recollect, only to realise my memory had failed me and so had google. Nada!
Somehow, months later, all thanks to my father’s sharp memory, I knew the name of the book. Minimal, yet perfectly describing its contents. A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces: Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present.
“Masterpieces” a little bold, you might think. But trust me, the stories are nothing short of masterpieces. Be it the very first story in the collection, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Hunger of Stones, or Ismat Chughtai’s eternal Quilt, or the lesser known Last In, First out by Irwin Allan Sealy, which makes you reminisce Delhi of the days gone by.
So I looked online and there it was. I ordered it, coincidentally on the exact same date as the article was written on, being only a year late. December 7th, 2015.
This book is a great compilation done by David Davidar and had a tremendous role in increasing my already sparked love for Indian short stories.
Having been studying literature for two years now, I was first introduced to Indian short stories in my very first semester. I had the privilege to read in-depth the stories written by few of the greatest short story writers that had lived, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, R.K. Narayan, Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, and Ambai. All the stories, of course, being translated into English. I envy those who can read the originals written in Urdu, Malayalam, Tamil, and so forth. Later on, I got to read even more of short stories, this time by writers from all across the world. I was hooked!
Short stories are best described by the following quote,
“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.”
Everyone has favourites, of my being Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the finest short story writers in Urdu. He had a tough life and found an outlet to voice his pain, which he did through his writings. Coming to present day, after much search, I have found a great collection of his works, including short stories, plays, letters, amongst others things, titled Bitter Fruit. I cannot wait to dive in and absorb his stories.
Meanwhile, I have been reading A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces, taking my time to grasp and understand each of the 39 short stories and their subtle undertones.
A reader's perspective 