She moves forward with mincing steps in time to an air inaudible to all but her, as if in precise synchrony with a phalanx of other dancers. But she is alone. Weeping and wailing she beats her breasts rhythmically. She passes by-a mourning sleepwalker moving in measure like a male Muharram dancer in a penitential procession in Karbala-bearing the unbearable weight of her dead child as though it weighs nothing at all.

An evocative collection of thirteen short stories, The Book of Common Signs is set among the women and men who inhabit the streets and by-lanes, the high-rises and hutments of middle-class India. Passionate, seductive and pulsating with raw energy, they break the boundaries of life and art to inhabit a landscape that is a metaphor for the dark anxieties of their own minds.

Ashok Srinivasan explores the human condition with clarity and compassion. In 'Mother and Child: Charcoal on Charred paper' he tells us the story of a married woman whose life unravels after a miscarriage as she finds solace in the love of another woman. In 'Not to be Loose shunted' he narrates the story of a young man coming to terms with the absence of his missing father.

'Ex-votos for a Mask Maker' is at one level about srinivasan's own anguish as a writer-telling the tale of a playwright whose dramatic characters come to life in order to destroy him.

Available-Active

1900/01/01

Good