Frosted Glass by Sabarna Roy

Frosted Glass comprises one story cycle consisting of fourteen stories and one poem cycle consisting of twenty-one poems.
The stories, set in Kolkata, bring to the fore the darkness lurking in the human psyche and bare the baser instincts. The stories, compactly written and marked by insightful dialogues that raise contemporary issues like man-woman relationships and its strains, morals and ethics, environmental degradation, class inequality, rapid and mass-scale unmindful urbanisation, are devoid of sentimentalization. The result is they remain focused and move around the central character who is named Rahul in all the stories. We encounter the events that shape, mar, guide Rahul’s life and also the lives of those around him, making us question the very essence of existence. Rahul symbolises modern man; he is not just one character, but all of us rolled into one. The story cycle stands out for two reasons – its brilliant narrative and the dispassionate style with which betrayal in personal relationships and resultant loneliness has been handled.
The poems weave a maze of dreams, images, reflections and stories. They are written in a reflective and many a time in a narrative tenor within a poetic idiom. The poems are inseparable in a hidden way and are magically sequenced like various kinds of flowers in a garland or chapters of differing shades in a novel. Calcutta or Kolkata features in some of the poems like the looming backdrop of Gotham city in a Batman movie.

The book left me confused a bit because of the recurring Character names. Every stories lead protagonist is named Rahul. Every story has a Sanjay, Sana, Leila, Gargi etc. As a reader, I tend to think that the characters are from the previous story and that left me confused as I busy finding the connection.

The book seems to be an exploratory avenue for repressed sexual desires. Every character involves in Extra marital affair or premarital sex or adultery. I mean seriously??? The pinnacle was when the author describes an act of fellatio by a 12 year old and mentions how she revers it. Are you kidding me?? That is perverted to the core.

The characters are offending. The stories leaves you feeling sick. And as an editor I found quite some errors. A Chapter name is repeated twice. Triple is spelled as Treble and so on.  I tried and failed finding a positive about this book.