We Want to Live

Description

It is a collection of 17 factual and fictitious short stories that are quotidian phenomenon in a materialistic society. A few are the sordid sagas about the social and sectarian fault lines and a few about dreadful corruption, domestic violence and dismal poverty. It is a sincere endeavour that unequivocally underscores the quintessence of pragmatism over cynicism in the post-truth world.

The first story ‘A Family Legacy’ is a sensational portrayal of Ahmedabad, India where during three riots, the Hindu zealots sequentially ruined three generations of a Muslim family. But the pacifists of the same Hindu religion had healed the wounds. ‘Anarkali’ censures the stubbornness of Muslims over the Babri Masjid dispute and ‘A Martyr’ conveys the same message of communal harmony. The ‘Mahuva Flowers’ and ‘A wick stove’ reeks of poverty and exploitation in a mediocre society while ‘She’ narrates the horrors of domestic violence. There is a sense of realism in three science fictions, ‘Apocalypse Now’ which unveils that robots are more humane than humans, ‘An Asteroid’ prognosis the catastrophic collision of a squandering cosmic body to the Erath and  in ‘We Want to Live’, an alien counsels the inhabitants of the Earth that the war and violence are prelude to their extinction. An illuminating ‘Death of a Seer’ is the narration about a dacoit whom a couple of enlightening books had transformed to a seer. ‘A Mind Reader’, ‘No Escape’ and ‘A Tryst with Truth’ are the expositions of crime and corruption in a society that leads one to self-disaster.  The unique is a metaphysical tale, ‘Doomsday’ wherein except one all the inhabitants of the twentieth century had to face the God’s wrath on the Armageddon. All the stories comprehensively convey profound ethical values and harmony.