About the Fly on the Wall & Other Stories

In her debut book “Fly on the Wall & Other Stories”, author and civil servant, Shubha Sarma examines different facets of life’s narrative with detachment, precision and compassion. The subjects range from up-market, urban settings to the depths of rural Orissa and areas of civil strife and deep social unrest. The narrative strings together anxious house-wives, over-imaginative teenagers and men and women in the sunset of their lives. There is Dipankar, yearning for Assam and returning to discover that he is a stranger and the beautiful Uma, mysteriously killed and awaiting justice. They are people one encounters everyday on the bus, the metro and the mirror. Each story is different, yet each has characters etched lucidly as on ivory, situations that look so real in their contexts and strategies that enhance the fascination of the unfolding narratives. The author’s subtle ways of critiquing the society’s cant, the hidden greed and violence in human beings, the nuanced condemnation of patriarchy in its various crippling incarnations, has created a publication crafted with an ingenuous sense of structural balance. As a whole, this assortment of tales with a twist brings to life the realities and contradiction of India and makes it an enchanting collection of highly readable short stories.