Here I Am and Other Stories: Short Stories

Sathyavathi’s stories explore the lives of a vast swathe of women – middle-class women yearning for economic independence, space and identity; women affected by migration, whether from rural areas to cities or from a metropolis to some dream world in the USA; young women fleeing from rural agricultural crises to become housemaids, wage labourers and construction workers in towns and, at the same time, tempted by the glitz of cell phones, beauty aids, scooter rides, expensive clothes and food in upmarket restaurants. Often, women from these several categories populate one story and the reader gets a glimpse of the commonality of women’s condition across race, class and caste. Mirroring the effects of globalization and cataclysmic changes in moral values and social behaviour – leading to devaluation of women – Sathyavathi brings the reader face to face with daily lived experiences in a narrative that is neither rhetorical nor verbose.