Hundreds of Streets to the Palace of Lights is a collection of some of the stories by S Diwakar published in two collections and some others that are as yet unpublished. Each story is
an indigenised version of short stories from all over the world. The writer’s passion for music, cinema and the visual arts forms the content of the stories and his experimentation with a
variety of styles infuses freshness into each one of them.
The stories have to do with the seemingly unreal experiences in real time situations; nothing is as it seems to be. While handling such themes as the varied faces of grief in the human
predicament and the attendant fear that cripples with a sense of helpless and isolation, the writer uses irony to handle the pathos with humour. Though the stories focus on the helplessness of
a commoner in the inexplicable instabilities of restricted spaces in the middle-class urban contexts, they also present a life-changing triumph of the spirit through personal concern and
fulfilment from the unexpected sources.
