Calcutta: She leads a dual life, the real one in the hovel where she lives and the other where she works as a perfume seller in an upscale store.

The character is based on a real-life perfume seller that journalist-cum-author Shuma Raha encountered and who managed to make her buy an expensive bottle of perfume.

The perfume-seller, an elderly couple on the verge of selling their grand old house, and other characters people The Love Song of Maya K and Other Stories, which was launched at Oxford Bookstore on Saturday.

An hour's discourse on the short story genre at the programme revealed how popular this form of fiction was. Panelists Supriya Chaudhuri and Jawhar Sircar dwelled on the form of writing, on the twists and turns in the stories, on "the art of articulation", the practice of observation and narration and much else through the evening.

Talking about the popularity of the short story, Sircar, chairman of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences and former Union culture secretary, said: "It is easier to read the short story. You can start a story and finish it. With a novel, even if you marked your page, you easily forget what you read before and what you read after. Short stories are easier and more handy. The descriptions, plots and trick endings in the book are likely to catch one's fancy."

Chaudhuri, professor emeritus, department of English, Jadavpur University, referred to Benjamin Walter's optical unconscious while speaking of the "element of unexpected in the short story where as if the light has been cast without focalisation".

Talking of the form, Chaudhuri said: "It makes us aware of the everyday process of discovery, of being conscious of the state of reality and recall us to this sense of our surrounding and curiosity of what happens at the end."

The book, the author said, had a strong Calcutta connect in that many of the stories are set in the city, while some are set in Delhi.

"It's about people like you and me, our lives, love, common frailties, inner conflict, disenchantment. It is also a reflection of contemporary urban life and modern social issues like bigotry, fair-skin obsession, marital rape," said Raha of her book.

A correction: July 23, 2018
In an earlier version of this report, the word 'fair' had been inadvertently dropped in the last paragraph