Sanyal's Two Beers, a Few Laughs, and Many Abrupt Endings

Just finished reading "Life over Two Beers and other stories" by Sanjeev Sanyal. This is Sanyal's. better known for his non-fiction works and being in the PM's Economic Advisory Council, first attempt at fiction. He chose the medium for he laments the loss of short stories and satires in contemporary Indian literature. While I agree with his diagnosis, this collection of about fifteen short stories and a couple of poems is not the cure.

Most of the stories are set in modern metropolitan India, and the satire is mostly aimed at the buddhijeevis—the inhabitants of the IHC, the cultural-intellectual elite. While the undertone of satire is there, as Ashish Taneja' also notes, it is often too thin and difficult to appreciate. The stories are too short and the endings seem abrupt in most cases.

 Sanyal can be a delight to hear when talking of domains he knows of, like his talks on  Process Reforms. I think more important to appreciate is that he is actually carrying out the reforms and nit just an advocate for them. While I have not read his non-fiction, I have seen his lectures and debates. He even had a show called Economic Sutra on RSTV to basically sell the current government's reform agenda, but that seems to have been discontinued. I liked that. It was a good show for people who knew nothing of economics as well as those who keenly followed the public policy debates. But alas, Prasar Bharti works in mysterious ways. In the collection too, "Drivers" and other stories which focused on the side working of the government stood out. "Used cars salesman", "Bench by the lake", "The intellectuals" were also good. Ironically, tales not set in contemporary India fared better to me. "Revolution of Humour", "The Return of Imagination" and the "Conference Call" were in this category. The first two of the three were set in distant exotic lands in past times, which I felt the author had a real knack for writing such settings, more so than for portraying contemporary India.

Here is my GR review. I will not link the other way around as one would normally expect due to reasons noted previously.  The Harmonic exam went well enough in terms of marks (should one have just memorised the assignments, it was a 100/100 paper), and it is as a treat I reward myself with writing this post despite the Advanced PDE exam tomorrow. Not that I was 100% seriously studying for harmonic. I finished The Housemaid's Secret and read half of Sanyal's collection yesterday. Just one more day and the semester ends. The atipication kills one before, and relief afterwards.