Kissing the Goddess and Other Nine Stories

Set in the background of a small developing town of Eastern India, this collection of short stories, is an attempt to entertain its readers with close to real life anecdotes.Sakshi, the young girl of "A Room For Music", grows up into Sakshi of "White Flour Cookies", only to realize that now her skin color takes dominion over the music she carries in her voice. "Train to Kanpur" and "The Buffalo Thieves" are recreated narratives based on real stories . "Kindly Consider" and "A Pinch of Tobacco" revolve around practical realities in the lives of a faithful servant and a wayward cattle caretaker. The young orphan in "The Mice Killer" is typical of many children in rural India. Her hopes to survive hinge on the kindness of an equally underprivileged person she calls her Grandma. "Granny's Crooked Fingernails" is a tribute."Broken Strings of Sitar" and "Kissing the Goddess" are works of pure fiction.The characters in these stories, humans or beasts, are those that breathe and live in sparse hamlets scattered throughout the terrains of this part of the world.However, names in the stories would bear exact resemblance to anyone only by coincidence and not by intention.