Since last 3 years, the number of anthologies that have published by both- small and big publishers have bored almost every reader who were interested in reading short stories. Almost 99% of them have been based on love and romance- a topic that has been grilled more than needed. Now, any synopsis that carries the word- LOVE irritates the reader and it's the first one to be rejected by him. In this phase of monotony, I got my hands on an anthology named "Crumpled Voices". It has the tagline "Shades of Suffering". The stories are compiled by the publisher, Pulkit Gupta, himself and edited by Ila Garg. The cover page of the book in itself is distinct and something that your eye will catch easily and it would become difficult to ignore it. Though I have one complain that why only woman is being shown and not all sorts of human who are facing crimes.
The novel consists of 23 short stories that signifies how badly our society treats few human being for no mistake committed by them. It is trying to tell us that there are crimes every where around us which we see, read and hear but never raise our opinion or voice against them. This novel in itself is a voice against all such crimes. The concept of the novel is in itself unique and yes, as said on the cover page, the need of the hour. I should compliment and applaud Pulkit Gupta for introducing this as no new publisher could have challenged to move out of the comfort-zone and publish something that's unheard in the market. Writing a full-fledged novel on such a topic is easy as you have time to portray the characters and situation but short stories should have depth to impress the readers.
Coming to the stories, I would like to clear it that I am not mentioning any favorite stories in particular as I have stopped meriting few authors out of many because everyone is a reason because of which one anthology gets picked up in the market. Every story tries to signify a point in a very easy language which almost every one can understand. No story is written in a very literary language that is hard to understand. Few writers have written some stories that can surely terrify you imagining the condition of women, gays and poor in our country. It's sickening to even read some passages due to the condition that they describe. I am glad that an anthology is able to speak such stories as not many youngsters are into newspaper these days.
Talking about few drawbacks:- I felt that the stories became repetitive after a point of time. A feminist will surely love it but I felt that Pulkit should have compiled lesser stories but only the ones speaking on unique topics. Crimes against women is given more preference which I thought became biased as there are many more crimes which could have been easily a part of this book. Editing is almost 90% perfect if compared to the quality of editing we see these days. Kudos to Ila Garg. Hope she can better the rest 10% too. The long introduction of authors didn't work for me. A paragraph should have been enough. No one is interested in knowing much about author but about what they are speaking. It only added to the book's thickness. In all, I would give this good attempt 3.25* out of 5 from my side.
Thanks.
ABHILASH RUHELA - VEERU!!! 
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