"Tiger in the Portico" is neither the heroic story of defeating a man-eater nor is it a story of bloodshed where the mammal emerges victorious. In fact, it is just the reverse - it is about two sisters running for their lives when they come face to face with a tiger. They run, and the tiger runs too! Things take a dramatic turn when the tiger comes in contact with a fanatic lover, a lousy forest officer and a bunch of noisy villagers. What happens next? Who escapes finally? The tiger or the girls? In Anju Darshini's beguiling short story collection, dreams and reality blur, exploring the dark and strange corners of our minds. Concentrated mostly in the pockets of downtown India, the stories wrap the extraordinary within the ordinary!
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The book has 5 short stories. The title is based on the first story.
The first story is where two sisters are running for their lives, meanwhile, Tiger is running too and both of them end up in the attic. What happens next surprises the readers. This story is so different and I loved the ending.
This gave me the impression to read the upcoming stories in the book as I expected the stories will be more interesting and have unexpected endings and that became true as the stories moved from one to the next.
I loved the character Lili as she was very passionate about her work and loved the journalist Paddy and Mala's silence which made me crave for her words. Read this book to know the fictional stories these characters hold through Author's imagination
Each story gives you different emotions fear, love, sadness, nostalgia as each story is so different and I really enjoyed reading them all. It made me travel with the characters in the story. The narration is so lucid and makes the reader read with the flow as it is written in a simple and interesting way.
My personal favorite story among these 5 is ‘ The tiger in the Portico', because of the two sisters and the character Abdul, his mom, Forest ranger Mukul and especially the tiger which made me fear for the life of girls and made everyone wonder what it will do next.
