Memorial to a city

Through the Corridors of Justice and Other Stories by Khorshed R. Javeri. Published in 2010 by I’Mprint!, a division of Vakils, Feffer and Simons Private Limited, Industry Manor, Appasaheb Marathe Marg, Prabhadevi, Bombay 400025. Pp: x + 96. Price: Rs 200.

Certainly the whirligig of time brings in strange revenges — never more so than in the fine art of short story writing. From the time of John Galsworthy to that of Ernest Hemingway, short stories used to have the usual beginning, middle and end, not necessarily in that order. But today’s short stories consider that outdated, passé. In fact, the short story today is not short nor does it have a story in the true sense of the word. It is about a casual memo­ry or a stray incident that is of no interest to anybody except the writer himself or herself. There is always the publisher who connives by labeling the collection a "national bestseller.”

Khorshed Javeri: prolific raconteur

Khorshed Javeri needs to be congratulated for sticking to the much-trodden path of the true short story writer. Through the Corridors of Justice is about a self-willed lady trapped in litigation against her will, who is rewarded beyond her wildest dreams by a quirk of fate. Similarly, the protagonist in The Hunt finds himself forced to betray a loyal subordinate by subjecting him to an office enquiry. Angels of God is the fulfillment of a young village boy’s dream of becoming a doctor. In A Single Woman, the central character comes to realize that the only escape for a woman from an unhappy marriage is economic independence. The other three very short stories mentioned on the book’s back cover — If Winter Comes, A Matter of Perception and The Trip to Greece — are written with great sensitivity and make for fascinating reading.

Javeri is a corporate consultant who has been writing on legal subjects. A characteristic of her short stories is that her characters are not left to work out their destinies. She takes it upon herself to be the raconteur — and a prolific one at that. Her stories are woven around real-life situations, recounted in an elegant but simple style that is characteristic of her writings. This is her second book of short stories, the first being The Mother and Other Stories. A compliment to Through the Corridors of Justice and Other Stories is that it prompts the reader to beg, borrow or steal her first book of short stories.

BURJOR K. KARANJIA