“The colloquialism of the stories may come across better in Hindi, but ultimately it’s the emotion that matters,' he says. A few critics have complained about the anodyne quality of the English version, lacking the bite and nuance of the Hindi original, though Misra begs to differ. Seasoned fans of Misra’s programmes may be disappointed though. For readers who don’t have enough Hindi to savour the taste of the original, the translation opens up whole worlds of experience and feelings from life in India’s small towns. Recently, some of the work by the members of Mandali was collected in Storywallah, a selection of 20 stories hand-picked by Misra and translated from Hindi into English for the first time by Khila Bisht.
