A Happy Place and other stories

by Vineetha Mokkil

The stories in this collection examine the complexity of modern living, brutal and tender by turns. They pulsate with the hunger of a teeming metropolis, the beat of the human heart, the ache of broken dreams.
A young nanny fends off her employer’s sexual advances and steps out into a world where she has no place to call home. A smug newspaper editor faces a shocking reminder of his mortality. A sex worker cruising the streets saves a journalist from her kidnappers. A cop gives an industrialist’s wife some unexpected help to confront her past when she is caught shoplifting. An NRI makes sense of his chaotic life by inciting his students to read Marx’s Capital. A housewife morphs into a deadly suicide bomber when a gunshot shatters the rhythm of her life. A baby gives a 53-year-old father a new lease of life. A car crash unites a pair of star-crossed lovers on Delhi’s mean streets. A much married scriptwriter runs into the woman of his dreams and inks a new beginning on his skin.

202 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2014

About the author

Vineetha Mokkil, an alumna of New York University, is the author of the short story collection, "A Happy Place and other stories" (HarperCollins, 2014), which was listed as one of the Ten Best Works of Fiction of 2014 by The Telegraph. She was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award June 2018, shortlisted for the Desi Writers Lounge Short Story Contest 2018, and is the winner of the New Asian Writing Short Story Competition 2018. She is a nominee for the anthology, "Best Small Fictions 2019." Her fiction has appeared in the anthologies "The Best Asian Short Stories 2018" (Kitaab, Singapore), "Bath Flash Fiction Vol 3" (Ad Hoc Fiction, UK), "Why We Don't Talk" (Rupa Publishing); and in the Santa Fe Writers' Project Journal, Berfrois, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Missing Slate, Asian Cha, The Bombay Review, Jellyfish Review, Sukoon, and The Bangalore Review.
Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Times of India, Tehelka, Asian Review of Books, The Hindu, Open magazine, and Litro.
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Reviews

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Happy Place is a collection of stories penned by Vineeta Mokkil. The stories are short and written in a simple third person but are diverse in perspective. Each story has an interesting theme or conflict at its centre. They remind me a lot of O. Henry stories; a fun read which punches with a twist.

I'd recommend anyone who likes to read the story form. If Mokkil continues with her craft, she might be able to become one of the best short story writers of Indian literature.

[Rachel Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short stories reflecting every life.. Some more touching than others..

[Reshma Jannath · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good collection of stories from urban India , varied and complex themes subtly presented. something soothing that i can only place as a tender, hopeful view of life runs throughout the stories, even in their bleakest moments.