The Firstpost Book Club concluded its February reading with a compelling conversation between the curator of the month, Rheea Rodrigues Mukherjee, and three of this month's most engaged readers. Mukherjee is the author of The Body Myth and was shortlisted for the TATA Literature Live First Book Award 2019.

The club read two short stories this February — Kritika Pandey's The Great Indian Tee and Snakes, which won the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and Amrita Pritam's Wild Flower, translated from Punjabi. While Pandey raises some pertinent questions on 'love jihad', communal violence in modern India, and women's agency, Pritam, in her short story, subtly subverts dated ideas as well as conventions that continue to shape women's lives and perspectives.

In some sense, both the stories challenge socio-cultural stereotypes, sometimes even employing stereotypes of the same kind to challenge the status quo.

Watch three of the book club's most engaged readers — Maumil Mehraj, Chintan Girish Modi and Tanishaa — critique the aforementioned themes and motifs with Mukherjee in this virtual meet-up: