Dear Jayanthi Sankar,

I am so glad I agreed to do this review. I have finally had some time to myself to read & re-read the first 2-3 stories.

I love the versatility of tones and facts in your stories.

When I started on “Did Churchill Know?” I was half expecting this to be about the war and whether Churchill knew how it was going to turn out. I was not prepared for that twist at the end. Oh, to say I was surprised was an understatement! I was shocked and bemused all at the same time and I wondered if it was your intention to make your reader the “Churchill” of the title! Oh, that was “wickedly” good! :D

‘Punkah wallah’ transported me back to the early days of Singapore - right to the beginning of the 20th Century, to be exact. How apt it is that this story will be published at this time when we are celebrating Singapore’s Bicentennial! The way our society interacted with one another of different origins and cultures, and how the different classes of our society functioned were all brought to life in these very pages. A delightful story that’s worth re-visiting.

With best regards, Angela Leong, 

Director of a research firm, Singapore.

((through email on 9thJune2019)

Review on the first two short stories - by Whatsapp on 11june2019

Jayanthi Sankar's writing brings out the human sensitivities hidden in the lives of common people and this collection of short stories is no different. The reader is awakened to the profoundness of seemingly undramatic events while getting a flavour of life in Kerala or Singapore. The stories also give a peep into historic events and their impact on people of different generations.

- N.Srinivasan, Senior Engineer, Chennai, India

An overall review of the collection - Dangling Gandhi

The traditional ways of storytelling often miss the subtle, deep insight of humans and culture. Jayanthi Sankar’s ‘Dangling Gandhi’, a collection of short stories, truly Asian,  breaks the conventional trends of short story writing not just in the formats but also in the themes chosen. The characters and their culture and the never-ending questions of human values are woven artistically in a wonderful narration. Through interesting experiments of connecting characters and lives, the stories carry unique flavors.

Be it the backdrop of Singapore or a hill station in India, the reader traverses from the contemporary life into the histories, cultural and political divides between races. Opening new windows to the life and culture of various ethnicities of Asia, the stories reach beyond contemporary life to gently raise questions for the reader to ponder.

The author’s presence is totally absent in the stories themselves. The specialty of these stories is -they speak merging the borders and beyond borders. She excels in capturing cultural diversities of different eras and generations, finely weaving facts through them. Whenever this strength of hers that is unique compared to any contemporary writer, manifests it brings about a very wonderful reading. Not a word is wasted. Her dedicated editing while crafting that is evident brings about a meticulous depiction that is appallingly sharp. She seems to think and paint her fictions ‘beyond borders’ when she stresses so subtly in her fiction that the world and the natural landscape don’t belong to humans but the humans only belong to them. 

Full of empathy and without any shade sympathy results in a truly human understanding. The author holds up a mirror and shining the focus on different perspectives with not the slightest intent to tarnish but only just to raise all the awareness in the readers.

- P.Muralidharan, a poet, writer, literary critic and a translator, Chennai​, India

(through email during 2017)

Jayanthi Sankar, the author of Dangling Gandhi with 12 short stories, was born and brought up in India, living in Singapore since 1990, has been creatively active from 1995. It is her first work in English.  She has edited and translated the Global Anthology of 43 contemporary Tamil short stories 'Unwinding', with contributions from 10 countries have been published in July 2019. She has been published in several magazines and ezines like the indianruminations, museindia, The Wagon, inOpinion. This is her first novel in English.  Her short stories have found places in various anthologies including 'the other'. She has been invited to participate in the panels of literary festivals such as (Asia Pacific Writers & Translators) APWT 2018 at Gold coast, Singapore Writers Festival, Seemanchal International Literary festival, Asean- India Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Writers Festival.  Also a watercolour artist, she has been a freelancer for a decade and a half, with three years of experience in journalism. 

 jeyanthisankar28@gmail.com  /   yesjey28@gmail.com