India, July 5 -- In Namita Gokhale's Life on Mars, the women speak as if they have nothing left to lose. Or perhaps they've simply grown bored of politeness. Across 16 stories divided into two parts, Gokhale writes women who stagger through marriage proposals, viral fevers, God, bureaucracy, and desire. It is not just that they are ordinary, it is that Gokhale trusts their ordinariness to hold meaning. She trusts their stories to bend and reflect the tragicomedy of living in a society that never quite knows what to do with women who think.

Take Savithri, the protagonist of Savithri and the Squirrels, who introduces herself with a nonchalant bombshell: "I am one of the five Panchkanyas." The invocation is as layered as it is ludicrous, ab...