There’s room here for new techniques—a graphic short story, e-mails, chat rooms—but eventually what works best are the stories with a narrative. Ipsita Halder has brilliant asides in her graphic Rainy Days of Vaidehi but the storyline itself seldom rises above the "comfort of meeting the same stupid people".
Occasionally the writing as in Nisha Susan’s Broadband and the Bookslut or Tishani Doshi’s Spartacus and the Dancing Man glitters. But when you read 21 writers, what lingers are the story and characterisation, not pretty phrases. Paromita Chakravarthi’s satirical, well-written Instant Honeymoon sums up the anthology for me. Like the pilot episode for a TV series, most stories read like first chapters of a novel. Surely the short story deserves better!
