Introduction

I have always been an avid fan of the short story, both as a reader and as a writer. Thank you, Jonathan for letting me choose my favourites!
 
A short story contains multitudes of possibilities, of lives lived and worlds imagined- a veritable smorgasbord of ideas and form to savour and reflect upon. I always begin reading them with a sense of anticipation.
 
I do not have an academic take on them; what I am looking for is not just technical brilliance but an ability to show vulnerability and attention to the minutia of life.
 
During the recent lockdown, I started going on long walks and would often listen to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast where a writer chooses a story by another writer and discusses it. It was a wonderful way of reacquainting myself with masters of the form such as V.S Pritchett, Franz Kafka or Katherine Mansfield. 
 
Looking back at my choices, I am struck by how heavily slanted they are towards American writers and the preoccupation with relationships, identity and loss. I suppose I explore similar themes in my own stories in Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness. Displacement whether emotional or geographical is a predicament of our times and it features heavily in my own stories. We are more interconnected yet lonelier than ever before.