Album of human emotion in all its diversity

Set in oak-forested hills and misty meadows with blossoming rhododendrons, Harsh Vardhan Khimta’s Maidens of Trafford House — a collection of eight stories —is an album of human emotion in all its diversity. With a vivid imagination and carefully-chosen words, Khimta covers a wide range of human sensibilities, beginning with the story of Raman, a young travel agent, escorting a French woman who doesn't understand a word of English. Here, in Caroline, Khimta creates a picture of love and understanding through the “power of unspoken speech”.

In The Dying Letter, he tells the story of a woman who reluctantly opens and reads a letter addressed to her deceased husband. The author paints in myriad colours the emotions she goes through - her initial disbelief, agony and, later, understanding, and finally, the acceptance of her “unknown” past and lonely future. While The Tiger is an account of introspection, The Consignment, is a tale of hopeless struggle. A daily fight of a temple singer from Ujjain against forces unknown. He spends days and weeks away from home and family, with meagre resources in an unknown city with his terminally-ill child. He sleeps in hope and wakes in anticipation that the doctors in this big city, on the banks of the mighty Yamuna, will cure his boy from a disease he can't even comprehend. After days of trial and error and no answers from the doctors, finally, one day, he finds the solution. The solution for his son’s much-needed relief.

Gulmohar, the account of a patient, a nurse and a baby, is a mixed bag of emotions where initial abandonment slowly witnesses the light of hope, the assurance of allegiance, dependence and finally experiences the warm embrace of love. In The Table, the author very convincingly deals with the suffering and indifference of the two worlds.

While in Cashmere House, the story of a well-to-do but lonely woman looking for a meaning to her remaining life rings true in context of our present-day nuclear families. And finally, Maidens of Trafford House seems to be a canvas on which the reader sees, through the eyes of an artist, a reflective story of conflicting identities unfold. How the artist builds a fairytale of images and then his journey —though within the bounds of daily life — through the meandering path of yes, no and may be, and the final revelation.

With a keen eye for detail, to nearly every corner of human emotion, Khimta weaves a tight web of human experiences which is sure to leave the reader wanting more.