Four participants of an international conference on "The Art of Story-Telling"- three young persons and one not so young - prefer to remain in each other's company, decide to overstay and spend three days together in a beachside hotel in Goa before leaving for their respective home towns. While in Goa, they tell stories of their own invention, each of them telling a story every day, thereby recreating a backdrop immortalized by the 14th century writer Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron. Each of our group of four tells three stories in the course of three days. Some of the stories are realistic; some are magical; some are serious and comic at the same time; some modern fables have animals as characters and some of them even make sense in a curious sort of way. One thing, however, is common about these twelve stories: they celebrate life's diversities.
About the Author: Dr Dharanidhar Sahu (born 1948) is an English writer from India. He is a professor in English and currently teaches at Berhampur University, Orissa, India. He had his education in Ravenshaw College, Cuttack and Utkal University, Bhubaneswar ( India ). He received his Ph.D. degree from Utkal University in 1985. Dr. Sahu has put in 35 years in Orissa Education service and Berhampur University, teaching English. He has published quite a number of articles, on drama and Poetry, in prestigious journals. His short stories have appeared in The New Quest and The Heritage and in many journals across the globe. For the last few years, Dr. Sahu has been working on the structuralist theories and their applicability in the text of Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Sam Shepard, However, his most favourite Twentieth century author is Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He is a regular contributor to Speaking Tree Section in the Editorial page of Times of India. His literary work includes. * Heroes and Monsters: Ten tales In verse (Lulu/Createspace, 2007) - ISBN 978-1-4348-1397-8 * Cats on A Hot Tin roof (Academic foundation, 1990) - ISBN 81-7188-003-7 * The House of Serpents (Orient Longman in India and Sangam Books in London, 1996) - ISBN 8125007865 * Simple things of Life (Atlantic Publisher 2001)- ISBN 81-269-0028-8 * Three Shatakas of Bhartrihari Sringara, Vairagya & Niti: Love, Dispassion and Ethical Conduct (Verse Translation, 2004) - ISBN 8185504423 * Smruti O Sanketa, a collection of Oriya poems (Mulyayana Press, Cuttack 1980) Here is what eminent American Literary Critic Leslie Fiedler wrote after reading Prof. Sahu's literary work, Cats on a Hot Tin Roof. "What gives Dr. Sahu's study its true distinction, is his ability to move from such abstract, generalizing theories, sociological, economic, metaphysical and psycho-analytical, to specific, concrete details of the major plays of Williams. No one who has read his study can return to the texts of or watch in the theatre or on the screen The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer or Sweet Birds of Youth, without experiencing them in a new and richer way. It is a further virtue of this study that it leaves us longing to return to those texts, as well as to meditate further not just on their author and the society in which he wrote, but on ourselves whomever, wherever and whenever we may be. "