Short stories, journals and spirits

NEW RELEASES

The Waiting Room
Anupa Mehta
Penguin Books India
Rs 195
168 pages

When Aniket Nair bumps into an old friend and her daughter in a departmental store, he is delighted at the thought of being a part of her life again. Still susceptible to Maya's easy charm and disarming vulnerability, Aniket slips easily into the role of confidant and guardian, unaware of how deeply life has scarred the carefree Maya he once knew.

Years later, sifting through the journals in which Maya meticulously recorded her troubled life, Aniket uncovers answers to difficult questions that had plagued him as he witnessed Maya, already fragile from repeated betrayals and constant paranoia, veer dangerously close to breaking down: What exactly did go on behind the closed doors of her psychoanalyst's clinic that had traumatised Maya so? Will the other victims of the unscrupulous therapist, whose stories Maya has unearthed, ever get justice?

Bringing Back Grandfather
Anjali Banerjee
Puffin
Rs 165
176 pages

Anu and his grandfather are happiest together, bird-watching in the forest near their home in Seattle, waiting for the rare barred owl to show up. One day Dadu suddenly dies in the woods, but his see-through spirit stays with Anu.

He is desperate to get his grandfather back from the gods. With his best friend Unger, the daring Izzy Mumu next door and help from the Internet, Anu sets out to turn holy enough to perform great wonders.

He visits a graveyard, shaves his head like a sadhu, lives on offerings of sandwiches and water, and rolls all the way to school "" through rain and poop "" like Ludkan Baba. In the end, the only hope he has left is Karnak, the awesome magician at the Mystery Museum on Divine Island.

What happens when Anu finally finds himself face-to-face with Karnak "" and a truth he cannot escape? Find out in this warm and funny story about how a boy deals with being foreign, being bald and being separated from someone he loves.

The Nude: Collected Stories
Nergis Dalal
Penguin Books India
Rs 200
224 pages

Written in lucid prose and set in the most ordinary situations, the nineteen stories in The Nude are fascinating snapshots of life that chart some of the most basic and most intricate human emotions.

In the title story, Robie is looking for a model for a nude he has to paint, when he is introduced to Mrs Oliver by his friend Turner. When he sees her, he is disappointed at how utterly unsuited she is as a subject for the kind of painting he has in mind.

However, when she poses, he realises that some women look best in the nude: "Some women should never wear clothes""clothes that hide the shape and colour of their flesh and skin..."

Bhima cheats on her devoted husband Madhu but is in for a rude shock in "The Silver Anklets" and a man dies trying to induce in his son "A Taste of Blood" and make him a "real" man.

A police officer, caught in a storm in the Garhwal hills, takes refuge in the temple of "The Alabaster Goddess" and achieves an unexpected breakthrough in an old investigation. Vanilla fudge and Mr Krishna's death are cause for much jubilation for two little girls in "Happiness Is a Box of Fudge".