Kevein Books and Reviews

Siddhartha Street by Sudha Yadav is a collection of ten short stories. It’s an easy-to-read, relatable, and subtly interconnected collection. Right since the beginning, look at the front cover page, it gives vibes that the stories are placed in South India, in Tamil Nadu. Costumes, Dosa, auto rickshaw number, and daily chores… evidently a South Indian setting… Siddhartha Street is all about familiar neighborhood stories, with regular dose of melancholy, emotional drama, social idiosyncrasies, parental intervention, gossiping, and so on. The book is staged against Siddhartha Street , it acts as a part protagonist, and cultural point. The street has residencies of all types across many class and religions – big houses, flats, lonely apartments, tenants, land lords – it bustles with a small rivulet of diversity. The author must have lived at one such place to deliver similar stories. The book commences with ‘The Retired Couple’. Mr and Mrs. Ranganathan is a lonely couple, their son re

The Sutras by Samrat Sanyal is a riveting sci-fi with a healthy dose of mystery, suspense and thriller. The novel deals with the concept of ‘aliens’ visited the earth thousands of years back. Was it possible when there was nothing like telecommunications and internet? Could be! Samrat Sanyal’s novel follows the similar path and surprises the readers with its findings. The expanse of the novel is vast with timeline shuttling between present and past, also there are many characters, yet nothing seems redundant. The main leads in the novel are a scientist named Shashi, detective Devdeep…and a few more auxiliary characters from India and abroad. Shashi aka Shashanka Mishra is a young and promising scientist from India. In the caves of Chandeli village of Chattishgarh, he found something valuable related to aliens. Later it comes out that the aliens who visited Indian subcontinent thousands of years ago left a few hints and equipment at various places for the use of future generation.

Roving Eyes by S. Mahesh is an engrossing collection of short stories taken out from the history of India, from various time periods with different backdrop. Truly, the book is about love, lust and battles of Indian royalty with respect to women. Nearly all stories follow a set parameter, the author first describes the ambience, introduction of the kingdoms, setting for impending battle and preparation and much later a beautiful woman character that will either bring peace or augment the bloodshed. The below excerpt shows the brilliance of the author while describing the opening scene of the story. “Kalyani, the capital of the Chalukya empire, was decked up like a bride. Its streets wore a festive look: thoroughfares were spruced up and decorated with garlands of marigold.” The book commences with Amrapali story, she was destined to be a Nagar Vadhu due to being excessive beautiful. She sacrificed her youth and love for the sake of her kingdom, to avoid bloodshed. But the irony o

‘Lies Look Like Love’ by Bijaya Kumar Mishra is a riveting romantic thriller. On one hand the storyline is wrapped with romance, on the other hand churns a multi-layered suspense thriller. The novel features two lead characters Maya and Ravi – both are simple and likeable…yet inextricable from one another. As the novel starts, we see that Ravi posing as a scientist comes to a small rainy forest town. After staying at the forest rest house, he searches for a house on rent in the town. However, that is not easy as he is a bachelor. Somehow he gets a room on rent in the villa where a widower Maya lives with her sisters. Maya lost her husband Ansh in a car accident. She is gloomy and when stumbles upon Ravi, her hope of finding love again blooms up. Initially, as Ravi lives in the villa, Maya gets close to him because of his decency and good behaviour. However, soon as the rumours spread, it comes out that the villa is cursed. Ravi believes it and delves deep to find out the exact my

“Brambles” by Vee is a short book of five vignettes. The book is expressive and evocative in its nature and depicts the scenarios and state of mind of the author for a specific epoch. Vignettes are neither short stories nor plot-oriented flash fiction. Over the years vignettes are used by prominent authors like Hemmingway, Sandra Cisneros, James Joyce, and many more to express the imagery and symbolism, exact point of time with character detailing in a particular situation. Similarly, this book is highly evocative and expressive with its content to depict a certain mood and symbolism in our lives. The first vignette, ‘The Terrible Ordeal of Being’ looks into the emptiness of our heart and desires. Being alone doesn’t bring peace or prosperity; it rather gnaws one from within. The author explained the predicament of a lonely and aloof person brilliantly, in her own words ‘terrible emptiness – unyielding as smoke’ . Next vignette “Ad Idem” delineates futility of being puppet in life.

Triloknath is a prominent Indian author known for Odyssey of Self Realization book series. First one was ‘Witness to a Wandering Mind’, an award winning book that narrated the tales from his early days of upbringing, before the partition of India, the book was set in the rural and semi-urban backdrop and had a streak of social evolution and development. However, it was more on a personal and family front than the collective society. The second book ‘Witness to a Wild Goose Chase’ is clearly staged against the Punjab state of India, and it has T.N. Gupta as a major narrator and voice. This book is more about finding happiness in the realms of hedonistic world. Thus, the title is apt and the phrase wild goose chase means a foolish and hopeless search for or pursuit of something unattainable. The protagonist Gupta moves to Punjab in a government job in a society of government employees. There he and his family find it difficult to be in good books of everyone. Gupta who works in PWD d