Urban Shots by Paritosh Uttam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Urban Shots is an anthology of 28 urban short stories written by 13 Indian Authors. The book has been divided into 5 sections namely Relationships, Love, Friendship, Angst and Longing. The collection as a whole does look good. You will not know how good a story is unless you read a not so good one. The editor has done a good job in mixing things up  .Though not all the stories give you the feeling of having read a good one, most do.

The first short story is ‘Hope Comes in Small Package’ by Kainaz Motivala. This is the story of Priya, a fashion designer who is married to sumit. She is pregnant and unfortunately loses her child. This story is the about the low in her life due to the incident and how she overcomes it. This was a really well written story and probably the best of the entire collection and maybe that’s why the editor had chosen it as the first one. If you read the rest of the Stories with this one as the benchmark, then only a couple more stories would satisfy you. If you keep an open mind and read the rest, this will be a read somewhere between ‘average’ and ‘Good’.
The next story which impressed me was ‘Liberation’ by Malathi Jaikumar. This is the story of Chamundi, a uneducated mother of two kids, who dreads the weekends which happens to be the eagerly expected part of the week for most of us. Why? And how does she overcome it? The story is so relatable and I really liked the end. Actually I was grinning at the end of the story which does not happen often.

‘Replay’ by Paritosh Uttam is probably the most relatable story of the collection. How often have we come across people in Busses and Trains who ‘request’ us to Part with some ‘Nominal’ amount to them so that they can return to their native town or eat since they have not eaten for weeks together!! This is a story of one such incident. The story does not stand out because it is relatable but the way in which the author has linked the ‘uncommon’ incident to something else in the life of Lata , the lady in the story and how it helps her to solve a confusing issue she has been putting off.

‘Stick Figures’ by Vrinda Baliga is probably the next most relatable story. How often have we been asked to draw something when we were in kinder garden or play school? And what would most of us draw? You guessed it right. Two mountains with the sun setting or rising or something resembling our family members. That is what Tarun does when his mother is late to pick him up from his play school while he is thinking about the Baby sister his mother promised him. The end was kinda expected but still was good.

Some other stories worth mentioning are ‘Apple Pie and a grey sweater’ by Prateek Gupta, ‘Just average’ by Malathi Jaikumar, ‘A cup of tea’ by Paritosh Uttam, ‘Dialects of silence’ by Vrinda Baliga and ‘Driving down the Memory Lane’ by Kunal Dhabalia.
I liked the relationship section the most and Love the least with regards to the no of stories I liked. Overall the book was good and would have been better if 2-3 stories were deleted.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!


View all my reviews