Reading a short story collection offers a distinct pleasure. It is an experience that feels less like isolated sparks and more like a gentle fire warming you from within – each flame different in hue, but all feeding the same quiet heat. The Way Home, a collection of 12 stories by Shanta Gokhale, is that fire. There is warmth, comfort; there’s also pain and hurt when you are unaware of how close you are to the fire. For me, Gokhale’s stories are the literary equivalent of multiple steaming cups of chai on mornings that are neither quite warm nor yet fully surrendered to the chill of winter – those in-between days when each sip wakes you up slowly, letting you settle into your own self with an odd sense of familiarity and introspection.

Spare yet tender, Gokhale’s prose carries an uncommon precision. She is attentive to the subtle shifts in human emotion and instinctive reaction. It is the kind of writing that, in the first few pages, makes you feel as if someone is articulating thoughts you have had but have never seen in print. Her characters do not shout their truths from rooftops; instead, they reveal them in unassuming ways – an unspoken...

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