The Dynamics of Human Relationships in the Select Short Stories by Sayantani Dasgupta

An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Welmington, Sayantani Dasgupta was born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi. The books by the author include Women Who Misbehave, Fire Girl: Essays on India, America and the In-Between, The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood and Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis)Comfort and Delight. In addition to the remarkable essays on a variety of topics on women’s status and social obligations, the author has published a number of short stories. The stories deal with the psycho-social oscillations in the lives of the characters-mostly women-who display the characteristics of the modern free woman but are compelled to conform to the norms due to the societal pressures. One of the recurrent themes in the stories is the changing contexts of human relationships in the wake of the demands of globalisation and the corporate work culture. The present paper proposes to explore the dynamics of human relationships as depicted by Sayantani Dasgupta in some of her select short stories.