Review of Going Home in the Rain and other stories by Monideepa Sahu

By RK Biswas

Going Home in the Rain and Other Stories
by Monideepa Sahu
Kitaab International Pte Ltd., Singapore

In a world where writers seem to increasingly expend more energy screaming for attention, Monideepa Sahu comes across as a breath of fresh air. This also means that readers can miss her altogether, and in the process deprive themselves of fiction that is both sensitive and well rounded, satisfying as well as just a bit out of reach, providing more food for thought.

Going Home in the Rain and Other Stories is a book that can easily fit into a ladies bag or the side pocket of a backpack. You could read it on a train, at an airport during that pause between journey and destination, and find yourself carrying the stories along after the book is spent. The thing about this collection is that the stories themselves are about journeys.

Just as a stalk holds together its bunch of grapes, and the stem of a pinnate leaf its double row of leaflets, the idea of journeys runs like a spine through this book of fourteen stories. And the journeys are not necessarily from one physical place to another. They are also from one inner point, a state of mind, into another.