Ravish Kumar
2015
Rajkamal Prakashan
pp. 90
Ishq mein shahar hona is a collection of short stories based on romance but also talking about politics and urban life. I picked up the book only because of Ravish Kumar’s reputation and with a sense of bewilderment that someone who I had only heard raise crucial social issues could also write love stories. I wasn’t disappointed. The introduction is super powerful. When I ordered it online, the title read ‘Laprek Vol. 1’, leading me to undertake a search on what Laprek meant. I felt quite ignorant in discovering its meaning and the number of years it has been doing the rounds.
The short stories are really short and while the writing is for the most part enjoyable, you constantly feel that the stories are incomplete. The characters move on to live their independent lives but you never get to hear of them. There is a sense of continuity, and being left out. The stories are contemporary, tracing the movements of the recent past. You could travel the whole of Delhi through these stories. The roads and monuments are described in the fleeting way that Delhi-ites experience them, unlike the way tourists do.
The downside was the overemphasis on sensuality. Intimacy was reduced to this need for touch which after a while, stopped being subtle purely due to repetition. Other than that, the stories are enjoyable, hidden gems of metaphors here and there, and the sketches are wonderful.