Category: Short stories
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Rights: World rights available (excluding Indian subcontinent)
Anu Singh Choudhary’s stories have, at their centre, a series of remarkable women who are trying to find their true identities, even as their dreams, desires and ambitions jostle for space in cramped hostel rooms, work cubicles or dead-end marriages.
For instance, The Way Things Were narrates how a teacher discovers a terrible secret that plagues the life of a student she thought insolent. In The Colour of Love is Like Water, two middle-aged women meet for the first time since college and look back on the moment that caused a rift between them in their younger days. The Lines of Destiny juxtaposes the lives of two pregnant women – one born in the lap of luxury and another into poverty – through the eyes of a young servant. And in the titular story, a blue scarf symbolizes the ups and downs in a married couple’s relationship.
Now available for the first time in English, the nuanced, intimate stories in The Blue Scarf will move you with their quiet brilliance.
The author: Anu Singh Choudhary