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A Master Storyteller

April 14, 2025

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India Today

Namita Gokhale's new collection of short stories—Life on Mars-is peopled with an interesting set of characters

- Aditya Mani Jha

A Master Storyteller

The titular story in Namita Gokhale’s Life on Mars: Collected Stories follows a woman who befriends an unusual young man the same age as her emotionally distant sons. The story derives its name from a passage where Gokhale makes a poignant connection between the stereotypical imagery of Martians as ‘little green men’, and a group of doctors in their green-hued scrubs, huddled around the woman as she enters the hospital.

“Before I knew it, I was in hospital, being wheeled around on a rattling trolley—well, not a trolley but a stretcher, and there were arc lights and men in green overalls wearing masks. As the anaesthesia got to me, I discovered that I was on Mars, there were masked men in green overalls everywhere, and life on Mars wasn't really so different from life in Delhi. It was difficult, tedious and painful.”

It’s a particularly clever narrative gambit also because the woman's new friend, Udit Narain, is a “genuine crank”, a conspiracy theorist who would no doubt chuckle at his friend invoking Martians in a relatively mundane medical situation. Life on Mars contains stories Gokhale wrote through the 1990s and the 2000s, as well as several new stories written in the last few years.

India Today

هذه القصة من طبعة April 14, 2025 من India Today.

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