Sneha reviews Temple Classroom & Other Stories by Puja Roy, exclusively for Different Truths.

Author: Puja Roy

Genre: Short story

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Short stories always fascinate me to the core,  because it’s a craft where an author puts forth many things in fewer words.  It requires special talent to pen down short stories, which are precise and crisp.

This is one such collection of short stories where the author has outdone herself.

The stories picks up  issues we experience in our day to day lives and presents it with a unique hue.

Each story is unique in nature and different in tonality. The stories picks up  issues we experience in our day to day lives and presents it with a unique hue. Some tales are of ordinary people having extraordinary life goals, while some stories make us see the other side of our lives, which we conveniently don’t talk about.

Although each story is beautiful, few of them deeply touched my heart.

The first one is, Temple Classroom, which narrates the tale of a girl who fights against all odds to get educated. Not only that, she made the way for other kids of her small village to receive education.

The first one is, Temple Classroom, which narrates the tale of a girl who fights against all odds to get educated. Not only that, she made the way for other kids of her small village to receive education. How does young girl manage to do bring education in a place where there wasn’t a single school? Well, you have to read the story to find out.

Second one I liked is, The Root. In this story, an orphan girl who felt rootless all her life,  finally found her root in her unborn child.

The Last Promise, Broken Nest, Thread of Faith, touch upon tender issues, bringing forth homespun stories to us with the slices of life in them.

The Last Promise, Broken Nest, Thread of Faith, touch upon tender issues, bringing forth homespun stories to us with the slices of life in them. These are stories with issues that are more often than not really not thought about, as we tend to take them for granted. But deep within they hold the real basis that form out lives.

Silver Anklets narrates the story of a couple who love each other immensely.  The husband’s sweet gesture really touched my heart.

My personal favourite is Homemaker in which we see a mild docile housewife emerging into strong woman

• My personal favourite is Homemaker in which we see a mild docile housewife emerging into strong woman through the narrative and how she finds her new identity in her baking.

The stories are beautifully written and compiled. The language is simple yet perfect. The author has done a tremendous job in writing about common themes and some less spoken about topics.

As the stories are mostly written in familiar backdrops, we can completely relate to them as if they are our own.

These stories talk about common people and their lives which is intriguing to read.

These stories talk about common people and their lives which is intriguing to read.

The book through its various worlds that the stories created, made me smile and cry, alternatively.

Temple Classroom & Other Stories is a collection of various facets that form our lives and the lives around us. These are the stories that were written over a period of two years in buses, trains & metros…on laptop, mobile and computer.

The blurb of the book says, “A beggar girl struggling her way out in this big, bad world helplessly hoping for a benevolent hand, a housewife for whom marriage has lost its meaning long back and she is only carrying the habit of it now, a young girl who wishes to bring quality education to her illiterate village folks, an orphan who roots for her true identity in the child she is yet to birth, a village tea seller who wishes to become a famous actor in Bombay. Temple Classroom & Other Stories is a collection of various facets that form our lives and the lives around us. These are the stories that were written over a period of two years in buses, trains & metros…on laptop, mobile and computer. Some of these tales were written from the myriads of experiences that life threw at the author and some are figments of her imagination, borne out of its various impressions.”

A must read collection!

Photo sourced by the author