SELECTED SHORT STORIES OF CHANDRASEKHAR RATH

The reader is amazed at the intensity with which the characters are built up in the stories. The universality and the uniqueness, both simultaneously, keep the readers on their toes till the end through the description of characters and events. Often the reader is left bewildered and unable to come out of the magic of the language and events long after completing the story. It compels him to browse through the story one more time to comprehend the nuances and to enjoy pure literature. Not only human beings, but also other living beings like an insignificant drumstick plant (in 'Unworthy') and that unnamed huge old tree (in 'The Story of A legendary Tree') feel eager to touch the soft malleable corn or of the heart of the readers. A popularly held belief that a child born on a new moon day, especially if it is a girl child and comes out of the womb of the mother in an inauspicious moment of total lunar eclipse is bound to be stigmatized, has been completely obliterated in the story 'Goddess'. The principal character of the story in 'Love Rekindled' could realize after reaching the age of his youth as to why the aromatic Earth plays with varieties of fragrances by sucking pollen from different kinds of exotic flowers. On the day of the coronation ceremony of the would-be king, Baraja vanished with the Royal Horse leaving everybody awe-struck. Even decades after, when the reigns of the administration has changed hands from Kings to representatives of the citizens, entire population continue to believe that Baraja would come to save them, in the story 'The Saviour Shall Come'. 'Keda' leads an arduous life being ignorant of the pleasures of a cycle-rickshaw ride down the slope of the hill and still wonders how people enjoy it when he himself got the opportunity of such a ride. The sarcasm that all the fathers are stupid individuals played heavy when the young man became a father himself in the story 'Offspring'.