Vinod Kumar Shukla has long been recognized as one of India’s foremost writers, with a voice uniquely his own.The stories in Blue Is Like Blue deal with ‘smaller-than-life people’. They live in rented accommodation, often in single rooms, where one electric bulb does for light. There’s a nail to hang clothes from and a wall-to-wall string for the washing. When the clothes are dry, you place the carefully folded shirt under a pillow and lie down to sleep. Money is a concern, but the bazaar is the place to go and spend time in, especially if you have nothing to buy. The fear that you may be overcharged accompanies every transaction, but joy is not entirely absent. Few works of modern Indian literature come alive in English, and fewer still in the way that these stories do in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai’s brilliant translation.