Tales of You, Me and Them

By Anju Darshini

Tales of You, Me and Them, is a collection of eight short stories. A village flows through the heart of the main characters in these stories. The author remembers her childhood and holidays spent in Keeladi, a South Indian village, and lets her imagination flow as she connects her stories to this little village that fascinated her immensely.
The stories carry the battles, triumphs and failures in everyday lives of everyday people. It transforms the lives of ordinary men and women, into very real and, yet, extraordinary tales.
There is love, hatred, revenge, pain, desire, dreams, challenges, and then, there is hope. Hope that can light up many lives, including yours, mine and theirs.
Each story will leave a lasting impression on you, making you realize how simple, and yet, how so complicated life happens to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9788194394105

Anju Darshini

ANJU DARSHINI likes to capture everyday moments, everyday stories, and believes that life is much more vibrant and colourful than how we usually imagine it to be. Her characters are real, honest and fearless; they surprise her through their simple, yet complex lives. She weaves a pattern of darkness, desire, hope and light, but not necessarily in that order.Anju Darshini has over 15 years of corporate experience in Brand Management, and Internal & External Communications. She currently leads the Corporate Communications Department of a well-known Automotive IT - MNC in Chennai and she is also part of its Business Leadership Team.

Book preview

STORY 1

THE TRAIN

JOURNEY

Are the pieces connecting?

My thoughts, my feelings, my damn love, the gush of emptiness

that swamps my life and then what you did…

No, they aren’t.

Sithara was excited about the trip. After a very long time something had excited her. She would be travelling from Tirunelveli to Jammu; one of the longest train journeys in the country. And, she would be travelling on her own. As a part of her job, she had just closed out a staffing project at Tirunelveli for a leading hotel. She worked as a recruiter, in a manpower agency, in Chennai. She had been planning this trip to Jammu for so long. And, was waiting to close this project and go on her planned vacation; one long train journey, to see her dream place and catch up with her Leela athai, her mentor, her confidant, her everything.

It sounded like a perfect plan. And, yes, it is a perfect plan, thought Sithara.

She was impatiently waiting for the train to arrive; she looked around and as usual, the railway station was busy and overcrowded. The Ten Jammu Express was yet to arrive. It ran between Tirunelveli and went till Katra in Jammu & Kashmir, covering a distance of nearly 3,631 kilometres. Of the 523 stations enroute, it halted at 62 stations and had a total running time of about 71 hours and 20 minutes. The train passed through 11 states and ran once a week only.

The journey covers 11 States, and that is quite a lot to see sitting right inside a train. And, this also gives me so much time to complete all that I have noted down on my to-do list, Sithara told herself.

Soon her train arrived; she found her place in the cosy Second AC and sat comfortably after her baggage found its place. She looked out of the glass shield; it was like watching a silent movie, people scampering their way through to board their trains to reach their destinations. Her compartment was empty for now, her fellow passengers were yet to arrive. She took a book out of her handbag and read the title aloud: The Chronicles of Narnia, by CS Lewis. She had decided to complete most of it before the end of this journey. Children’s fiction fascinated her.

Sithara believed in having more short-term goals to reach her ultimate goal of starting a publishing company. She had worked for more than 15 years now, and in the next 5 years it was important for her to come out of the hectic corporate life, where people kept trying to bring work-life balance throughout their lives, and miserably failed. According to Sithara, people lived and died of stress. It was never a peaceful life, switching jobs or roles, running behind money, insane targets, pleasing fellow colleagues, staying away from politics and trying hard to be diplomatic to such an extent that you would burst someday.

There is no work life balance, in fact, it is alarmingly imbalanced, she thought.

Sithara had nothing really exciting happening in her personal life too. It had been quite empty and void for a long time. Her parents had tried to find her so many ‘perfect’ matches, but she had refused it so often that they eventually gave up on the idea of getting her married. She had seen enough drama in life; her own uncle in the village trying to fix her with his entrepreneur son, but nothing had materialised. Sithara hadn’t gone home for almost 3 years now, only her father had come over to meet her twice in Chennai. Except her athai, who somehow seemed to understand her, Sithara didn’t feel connected with anyone else at home.

Loneliness was there, quite prevalent in her life. Office to home, home to office; the vicious routine killed her internally, but it was she who chose to live that way.

She could have chosen to move on from her past, but she purposefully made this choice. The choice to remain single, to focus on her start-up idea, and end her life in an old age home.

She looked out of the glass shield, to distract herself from her trail of thoughts. She had decided to go on this trip to connect better with herself, understand the importance of self-esteem and self-worth; to relax and start afresh.

A woman hurried into the compartment, with 3 bags in hand. She was sweating heavily. "Is this 35 and

Reviews for Tales of You, Me and Them

[anupamavijay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading Anju Darshini's Tales of You, Me and Them was a very pleasant experience. I couldn't help connecting my own experiences with a couple of stories here and there.

The author's language flows beautifully and her style is reminiscent of the great R.K Narayan. And this makes it a double treat for everyone who is in love with contemporary slice-of-life stories. There is one to cry, one to laugh, one to ponder, and another to wonder. Tales of You, Me and Them is a bagful of emotions that kept logged onto dear life.

I am already looking forward to Anju Darshini's next novel.

If you are reading this review, you should definitely read this book.