Eunuch Park
Writer: Palash Krishna Mehrotra:
Publishers: Penguin India, Rs 250
The subtitle reads: Fifteen stories of love and destruction. The writer is under 35 years old by his own admission. There is going to be something deeply bitter about these stories. You are not going to get off lightly. The eunuchs at the park are coming for you. They want to charge you, again and again, for the privilege of finding a spot where you can make out with your girlfriend. That’s the least of your problems. You might as well watch the lizards munching insects on your ceiling. Your teachers verge on the insane. That choreographer in the corner? He does not dance at discos precisely because he is a choreographer even if he likes Justin Trousersnake and Beyoncé, names that will be forgotten soon, names that make these stories contemporary, today’s stories, who gives a flying fuck about Raj Kiran in Hip Hip Hurray? More often than not, these stories come off. They have a ring of truth to them, as if they were notes from some mofussil of boredom and despair.