India, Jan. 10 -- In Shanta Gokhale's short story, The Storyteller's Tale, the narrator Kinnari buys an anthology of stories from a bookstore in Mumbai. "(E)everybody was reading it and raving about it, and I. was looking forward to reading and raving about it too," says Kinnari. However, by the third page of the book, Kinnari is bored by one of the stories, which is about "a company executive who battered his wife on a regular basis." "The blurb praised the author for the delicacy of observation she brought to human relationship," says Kinnari. "What delicacy?"

Then, she reveals her real-life experience of her drunken father regularly assaulting her mother, and her mother crying copiously at his death. "Now, explain the delicacy here," ...