Sai University stands out for a whole host of reasons, and the most important among them is the innovative courses and curricula we offer. To help students get a comprehensive understanding of our multireligious, multicultural, and multilingual society, we have included Indian short stories as an elective course for first-year undergraduate students. In addition to getting acquainted with some of the treasures of Indian literature, Indian short stories help students understand more about the people living across the country and thus broaden their horizons.

This course will explore modern Indian literature in detail, focusing specifically on short stories. The aim is to introduce the students to the short fiction genre and raise relevant questions about literary form and content. It will study the emergence of literary sensibilities in India that define the modern Indian short stories in the 20th century. One of the central objectives is to help them get familiarized with top writers and short stories that have contributed to the formation of the Indian short story as a popular genre.

By exploring short stories from various regional literary and cultural traditions, the course highlights the role of literature in reflecting and shaping social contexts. It also focuses on Indian writing in English and vernacular literature in translation. It covers literary themes such as tradition vs. modernity, partition, caste, gender, and other social issues.

In addition to the following advantages, studying Indian short stories will help students understand more about vernacular literature, the power and impact of translations, and how they are contributing to the continuity and growth of Indian literature.

Here are some of the main reasons why Indian short stories, the must-read gems of Indian literature, are an integral part of the first-year courses of SaiU: 

• Indian literature is a mirror in which our society can see itself, and the short stories play a significant role in exposing societal realities crisply and engagingly. The short stories we explore as part of this course capture how our society finds its essence and values. 
• Indian literature gives a glimpse of the multireligious, multicultural, and the multilingual reality we live in, which exist distinctly but are interconnected and overlapped at multiple levels. Indian short stories act as a bridge and help students understand and appreciate the different people, places, cultures, and art in our country.
• Indian literature gives a glimpse of the gender, caste, and religious biases prevalent in the country. It provides insights into how writers from different vernacular contexts capture the experiences of people who face various forms of oppression and biases such as patriarchy and casteism.
• When it comes to gender biases in India, short story writers have constantly questioned them and have boldly written about them, thus carving out their identities in various arenas of Indian literature once dominated by men. Indian short stories comprise varied explorations of what it means to be a woman or the third gender in India, especially post-independence.

Short stories are a relatively new form. The key characteristics of a short story are often defined against the novel and the lyric. It is also the least studied of the three forms of literature which presents a strange predicament when it comes to Indian literature, where there is a wealth of short stories from across the country ⸺   often capturing the oral, the episodic, and the momentary truths of vernacular lives. So, this course serves as an antidote to the predicament. But also, above all, it is designed to affirm and reaffirm our urge to tell and hear stories.

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