Imprints - Colours of Life - Book Review by Shrinidhi Hande

Imprints is a self published book, containing a collection of 24 short stories, authored by two writers, Ravi Sidula and GS Vasu Kumar. The 113 pages book is available for purchase on pothi.com for Rs 99 (+shipping)

When I first received the copy of Imprints, I was surprised to see the cover price being under Rs 100. Because when I’d checked last time, it was impossible to get the book price below 100 at Pothi.com (Pothi.com is a self publishing platform, wherein they print a book and deliver, as and when they get an order. This means there’s no huge investment needed in bulk publishing the book, but on the other hand, disadvantage is that per copy price will be a bit high). When I checked with the author on this, I was told that authors have pumped in extra money from their own pocket to ensure that book is priced below Rs 100.


Well, getting back to the book, each story is independent and well knitted. The one I liked the most is titled “You’re not alone”… The story line goes as below: A man is helped to his seat by the Bus Conductor (Mysore-Bengaluru one), a girl sitting next seat starts the conversation saying “how beautiful the world outside…” The man feels excited by the conversation but realizes that the girl is blind. They continue to talk and become good friends, with him explaining how beautiful she is and so on… At Ramanagara the girl gets down and subsequently, someone comes to escort this man as well, as he too was blind…

There’re many other touchy stories, such as one in which an entire family member, suffering from draught, finally decides to commit suicide, unable to bear the burden any more, unaware of the fact that it would be raining heavily next day. There’s another story wherein a person saving money to publish his book had to abandon the plan as he’d to spend his savings on his wife’s hospital bill. Eventually his notebook containing stories reaches a groundnut seller and then to a reader, who likes his writing, goes back to groundnut seller and buys entire notebook from him… (These lines are just to give you an idea what to expect. I’m not able to explain the stories as effectively as it is portrayed in the book)

Like this, several day to day life experiences and observations are converted into short and sweet stories. Language is simple and you’ll be able to connect with the characters very easily as you read the stories. 


Each of the stories are dedicated to various persons, which is a good initiative. Most of the stories are also enriched with an image (pencil sketch version of photograph)

The Book is highly recommended by V Balakrishnan, (Infosys CFO) as well