No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories

In Kaikini’s tender collection, strangers encounter one another with indelible consequences in Mumbai, a city “like a mother watching wakefully over all the children asleep on her lap.” Kaikini’s talent lies in his ability to simultaneously capture the humdrum routine of his characters’ lives and plumb the depths of their desires. The opening story, “Interval,” follows two strangers seduced by their love of movies, who dream of running away together in search of their happy ending. As their plans take shape, each realizes the fantasy of their adventure would be “filled with a pleasure that the actual meeting did not have,” and in the end, the fantasy itself is enough to push them toward brave, new lives on their own. Other standouts include “Inside the Inner Room,” in which a wife helps her husband’s girlfriend through an operation and recovery, and “Toofan Mail,” where an uninsured stuntman explains why he named himself after a train. In “Crescent Moon,” a disgruntled bus driver steals a double-decker bus and drives it to his village for the annual Ganesh festival. The story brilliantly captures the “battle for dignity” faced by many of Kaikini’s characters. These stories poignantly express the characters’ feelings of triumph amid the limitations of circumstance. (July)