First Proof 2

"First Proof 2" is Penguin India's annual offering that showcases new writing and new writers from India. In 2006, the anthology carried my short story, Mrs. Anand. The story was well-received and in its review The Tribune, while misspelling my name, had this to say:

Manpreet Sodhi Someshwar’s Mrs. Anand is the story of a day in the life of a 40-year-old schoolteacher in a small town in the Punjab. Mrs. Anand was once pretty, but the long years of coping with work at school, the household chores, bringing up three children and trying to make both ends meet have taken their toll. The once beautiful relationship with her husband has deteriorated into long, sullen silences or bitter remarks.

"The conversation dried up; there was no time, their differences crept up too fast, and they didn’t resolve their quarrels soon enough and as the reality of living took over, Mr. Anand became an alcoholic and Mrs. Anand a workaholic." It is the story of "every" middle-class housewife and yet there is something tremendously heroic in Mrs. Anand’s will to go on that her daughter, Noor, recognizes and admires.

The details emphasis the ordinariness of Mrs. Anand’s everyday life and yet manages to lift it above the ordinary.