Ranjan Adiga's ‘Leech & Other Stories’: The world in a grain of sand
Single Dad Lockdown and published in the Tiny Love Stories section of the New York Times, the snippet was a masterclass in how much—rhythm, tension, emotion and catharsis—could be packed into barely a paragraph. Now, in his debut collection Leech & Other Stories, Adiga builds on his remarkable skill.
In each tightly controlled story, Adiga, a Nepali academic in the US, looks at the experience of people from Nepal—those living in the country, those considering leaving, and those who have already left. The collection brings a relatively fresh gaze to diaspora literature in the way stories set in domestic spaces—like Dry Blood or the titular Leech—look at cross-class relationships, and those set in professional spaces deal with identity.
In High Heels, Adiga shows how fragile fledgeling relationships can be when those involved—in this case Binod the bully and his sincere colleague Sarita—are unsure of their place within larger social structures. Through the story’s setting in a workplace in Nepal, he exposes how Nepali (and any South Asian) society manages a woman’s complaints about safety in the workplace, without dealing with the aggressor directly.
In contrast, in The Diversity Committee, Rakesh, a Nepali professor working at a university in the US is pulled up by the dean despite apologising for making a student uncomfortable with a hug. The interaction, however, takes a turn: the dean’s seemingly sympathetic understanding of cultural difference is weaponised against Rakesh when the former asks whether it “might be cultural" that his body language and cues are misunderstood.
What shines in these stories is Adiga’s lucid articulation of unfiltered, contradictory emotions. The conflicts may seem simple at first, but his
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