{"id":9129,"date":"2014-09-07T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T05:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=9129"},"modified":"2020-11-15T14:14:50","modified_gmt":"2020-11-15T08:44:50","slug":"urban-shots-bright-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2014\/09\/07\/urban-shots-bright-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Shots : Bright Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Paritosh Uttam<\/em><\/p>\n<p>29 stories by 21 authors, held together by the premise of urban India. Each story is only about 4-5 pages long, so the chances of boredom are fairly slim. But most of the stories do revisit well trodden paths, and do not really offer a refreshing take. The twists are fairly predictable except in a couple of cases. It really could&#8217;ve done with better editing &#8211; not just in terms of basic grammar and punctuation but also with the ordering and flow of stories.<\/p>\n<p>My favourites were &#8216;The Bengal Tigress&#8217; by Malathi Jaikumar, (for the tender nuances) Saurbh Katiyal&#8217;s &#8216;The Wall&#8217; (mostly because of a setting I could relate to) Paisley Printed Memories by Sneh Thakur (for the superbly poignant portrayal of a terrible human affliction) and &#8216;Heaven and Hell&#8217; by Shachi Kaul for its empathy and Rashmi Sahi&#8217;s &#8216;The Raincoat&#8217; for a well written, meaningful tale.<\/p>\n<p>Some stories attempted humour, others were more sober, some were poignant, and many were interesting, and all were indeed interesting to some degree. But what I hoped for and did not find were slices of life that would narrate the human condition that connects all of us. Dissing Chetan Bhagat&#8217;s brand of &#8216;Rs.95 + hint of love in the title&#8217; does not count! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9130 lazyload\" alt=\"Urban Lights\" data-src=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Urban-Lights.jpg\" width=\"602\" height=\"602\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Urban-Lights.jpg 602w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Urban-Lights-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Urban-Lights-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Urban-Lights-600x600.jpg 600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 602px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 602\/602;\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paritosh Uttam 29 stories by 21 authors, held together by the premise of urban India. Each story is only about 4-5 pages long, so the chances of boredom are fairly slim. But most of the stories do revisit well trodden paths, and do not really offer a refreshing take. The twists are fairly predictable except <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2014\/09\/07\/urban-shots-bright-lights\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[370,6007],"tags":[4476,4475],"class_list":["post-9129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fiction","tag-paritosh-uttam","tag-urban-shots-bright-lights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9131,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions\/9131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}