Perplex City: A Tale of Sinister Circumstances

At the times, when novels are diminishing the popularity of short story collections; we as a reader are in dire need of such short stories, which can satiate our hunger for stories. Even though I do have not any such apathy for novels, indeed; we can’t deny the charm of short stories. Easy to read without losing the track of the plot is always an experience that we love to cherish repeatedly without any evident remorse of being a bookworm! Undoubtedly, it’s quite tough to find such story collections these days but as it has been said, ‘What the mind can conceive, the hands can receive’; I was extremely lucky to get hands-on “Perplex City” by Naseha Sameen.

Alas! Perplex City is not your ideal go-to short-story collection where you can find a bunch of stories to satiate your creative hunger. Perplex City is just a collection of three stories but does not get fooled as it covers three different periods of lockdowns in the city of Gurgaon. It would be needless to say how much the current lockdown had affected us and in the same way the masterpiece by Naseha Sameen is surely going to boggle your mind at its core. Detailing on the various layers of the varied emotions of the mere mortals; Naseha Sameen takes a dig at the extremities of the various relations that we are bound to follow in the name of society. Whether it be the contamination of ICE drugs in Tower C or the Blossom Haveli around the independence of the country or Khali Dera during the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857; Naseha Sameen unpeels the rampaging greed, fear, betrayal, and such other emotions in a brutal fashion.

The preface adjoining every other tale is enough to understand the context of every story before we could further jump to our pre-conceived notions as human beings have a tendency to analyze beforehand which gives birth to a magnum opus like “Perplex City”.

Book: Perplex City