“Cafe’ latte” is an Italian phrase designating a type of coffee, literally translating into English ‘milk coffee’. ‘Cafe’ latte’ is the title of Amit Shankar’s collection of ‘eighteen unusual short stories’. Keeping true to its title, Amit Shankar’s short stories are brewed with awkward, intrepid moments, the moods move up and down, sometimes reaching into the unknown-the stories become a ride-simple yet sensuous. The book 
opens with ‘The Temple of the King’ (which is itself the name of a revered track of the British rock band Rainbow)-Dada teaches us to stand in the middle of the circle, hear the black bell and make the journey towards the temple of our inner self; a journey into our true desires, to be the king again. A God-like atheist, Dada strumming his favourite metal tune expresses his wish of building a cafe on the valleys of Jagroi for the weary traveller that we all are-running in concentric circles to earn that bit of material recognition. Dada dies on the way back, but “the baton has to be passed on’, so Ash runs Dada’s dream on the top of the valley….if you travel, take a sip.
A frantic father waits for his son on a desolate platform, night after night, exclaiming “Anjan! Anjan!” hallucinating the return of his dead son. ’The 26 Down Express’ comes and goes, Anjan doesn’t return….but that’s not all, Shankar induces another layer of mystery, implicitly indicating a seminal prophetic power of the senile old father. Take a ride, the rest is yours. ’The Lion, The Leopard and The Hyena’ reads almost like a moral fable-the young leopards have to be trained in the ways of the world by the lonely, yet wise ,Lion, if we falter to believe in the Lion and fall prey to the allure of the Hyena, we’ll be victims, always of betrayal. The stories meander along culminating in ‘True Lies’ which gives us a myriad of perceptions about life, sin and living.”Cafe latte` is the phrase with which the last short story ‘Writer’s Block’ ends, which blends a chance narrative and has features of magic realism, but somewhere fails to pack the last punch.
Amit Shankar’s language is a colloquial one-it is warm and humane, his style is lucid, the readers can move through the stories without a strain-you’d want to read some of his Unusual short stories-it is good Cafe to visit-an unusually homely one.
Book Details:-
| Author: | Amit Shankar | ||
| Publisher: | Vitasta Publishing | Year of Publication: | 2014 |
| ISBN-13: | 9789382711445 | ISBN-10: | 9382711449 |
| Cover: | Paperback | No. of Pages: | 208 |
| MRP: | Rs. 150 | Buy From: | Flipkart.com Amazon.in  |
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