What can be a bigger dampener than a book of short stories where characters are ghosts of one another, where each tale bears an imprint of having been penned by the same hand, and conceptualised by the same mind. Thankfully, Séance On A Sunday Afternoon is far from being it.

 Shinie Antony is not a first-time writer (having a novel, two volumes of short fiction and three books for children to her credit). This manifests itself as you hop from one story to another and each character turns out to be refreshingly diverse. A newly-single husband’s flashback of bitter-sweet memories of Sasha, his ‘ex-wife from the north-east’ ; ‘L’ who has lost a teat to third degree carcinoma and gained sad, whispering eyes in return; Senthil who gets a kick out of picturing himself in dangerous situations, sometimes crazy ones;  Rontu Mukherjee who hopelessly keeps on postponing his suicide plans, and many more of such well-visualised people.

The author’s quality to not just put herself in the shoes of her characters but to become one with them is creditable. There are times when it seems like you are getting real stories about real people, rather than figments of fresh imagination. Some situations are ones that you have lived through yourself.

The writing is stark … “L spends her time these days reading all the recommended literature and making all the usual promises to love her body through breast and through breastlessness. At home, in public places, while shopping for veggies or chatting on the phone, she often looks down... She wants to see them up close, she wants to see them from a distance. She wants to see them in third person, like they belong to someone else…. Suddenly the snap and crackle of a bra-hook is music to her ears.”

Snippets the story make

Antony’s innovation is apparent with the story titled ‘Overheard’ that is made of random snippets of conversations overheard. “D: All we have is hallway sex these days. We meet each other in the hallway and say ‘f**k you’…. P: Write her a cute note. Something like how we would have loved to publish her poems but how the stupid market is just not ripe for such cerebral, quality crap, etc… R: In my dream, memsa’b, I saw that I am saab's second wife. He tells me, go and live with my parents and look after them, that's your job as you know how my wife doesn't get along with them.”

Another example is ‘The Blogger’, the longest story in the book, that is a girl's blog on “how 2 b a good indian wife” and displays a generous sprinkles of SMS messages.

Séance On A Sunday Afternoon, with its 22 short stories, makes for light reading, though a stray story or two can be disturbing enough to settle down in your head for a bit.

Séance On A Sunday Afternoon
Shinie Antony
Pages: 180
Price: Rs 195
Published by: Rupa & Co