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Saturday, June 13, 2020

Book Review: Stories of Us: The Common Man by Bobby Sachdeva | Short Stories

Book Review

Stories of Us by Bobby Sachdeva


Book Review: Stories of Us: The Common Man by Bobby Sachdeva | Short Stories | Dhiraj Sindhi | Indian Book Blogger
Stories of Us by Bobby Sachdeva

Author: Bobby Sachdeva

ISBN: 978-9389109023

Genre: Short Stories

Length:  254 Pages

Publisher:  Pan Macmillan (6th December 2019)

My Ratings: 🌟🌟🌟🌠

Order your copy right now: https://amzn.to/3hdAbt5

About the author: 
Bobby Sachdeva is a storyteller by choice and a businessman by profession. He writes stories to highlight the problems with norms and standards in our changing society and believes that these perceptions can change. In all his writings, Bobby Sachdeva engages with the problems in the lives of common people and the ways to resolve these. In the last two years, he has written more than a dozen feature films, web series, and tele-serials and his popular book of short stories titled Stories of Us. Apart from writing, Sachdeva has produced nine short films in Hindi and three feature films in Punjabi and started a fully equipped studio, Ajab Productions, in his hometown Amritsar where he lives with his family. The production of his first full-length Hindi film will begin in 2021.

Book Review: Stories of Us: The Common Man by Bobby Sachdeva | Short Stories | Dhiraj Sindhi | Indian Book Blogger
Bobby Sachdeva

Instagram: @ibobbysachdeva
Twitter: @iBobbySachdeva
REVIEW

Summary

Stories of Us by Bobby Sachdeva, a collection of 41 short stories exploring a broad range of lives belonging to diverse social groups of varying wealth, power, status and race where the author directly questions the status quo regarding social, political and economic issues to make readers contemplate about the pressing subjects such as blind faith, discrimination, acquisitiveness and modern-day relations with some brilliant plotlines and some nebulous and abstract stories; strongly condemning our ways while sometimes offering values and ethics you may want to cultivate in your lives.

Narration

Stories of Us: The Common Man by Bobby Sachdeva depicts the struggles of the common man who has to constantly fight against the unscrupulous system. All short stories are narrated in third-person POV except a few. There is one symbolic illustration at the beginning of each story. At the end of the stories, Bobby Sachdeva asks thought-provoking questions to no one in particular but the society. The language is very easy and thus anyone can enjoy the book. The writing style is straightforward and consistent throughout the book.

Setting and Characters

Each story is set in different premises that are pretty much contemporary. The locations include India’s metro cities, villages and a couple of times a foreign country as well. Basically, the book captures the flaws in our society that we Indians intentionally or helplessly allow to exist. Many of the stories seem to reflect the oversimplified images of some characters just like we see in movies or TV shows but cannot be denied completely. There are many stories that follow families blindly adhering to godmen and superstitions without much rational thinking. While there are characters who share a complicated relationship with their families. Some characters are very focused on chasing money leaving behind their families and dreams. There are: fanatic leaders, RTI activist, parents, the only son of the family, eunuchs, daughters, rag pickers, garbage collectors, weak and poor, wealthy and powerful criminals and so on.

Theme

Based on the various themes, these stories can be categorized into 4-5 sections including faith & beliefs, family & relations, wealth & economy and discrimination & harassment.

Maximum number of stories were only focused on the godmen, blind faith, superstitions and unnecessary belief systems. Some of them are brilliant, delivering a strong message and addressing very specific affairs, whereas other stories are poorly executed with the same logic as others.

The second group of stories talks about relationship dynamics, hasty decisions, suspicion, work-life balance, internet affected families, parental expectations, unrelenting children and so on.

The third group involves stories regarding class consciousness, acquisitiveness, social responsibility, unlawful activities and other issues. Here, the author criticizes the government for abrupt implementation of laws after which the people are left alone to bear the consequences.

In the last group of stories, the author throws light on pressing issues like manual scavenging deaths (Do their lives don’t matter?), the life of eunuchs, molestation, threats to the safety of underprivileged & mentally ill people and so on.

My Opinion

Stories of Us raises the voice for the common man but on the contrary, some of the stories are very short and vaguely expressed that it fails to be effective enough. However, there are many stories that stand out from the rest having suitable and realistic plotlines to broach the subject we are turning deaf ears to. I would definitely recommend this to every Indian as it has the power of initiating the change.

I would like to share a few stories that moved me:

The story about attacks on RTI activists.

The story in which an exploiter financially debilitates a retired woman.

The story of humanity prevailing at the risk of a job.

The story depicting that a stray dog’s life is more valuable than an underprivileged girl.


Happy Reading!

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Will see you in the next post. Till then buh-bye. Take Care. Peace. ☮

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