Reading Sharmistha Mohanty’s Book One, you keep turning the pages, not to follow the story—though there is a story being told in every page, and in every page she tells a different story which is yet part of the fabric of the same telling—but to follow her sentences. They are unflinching, tender, unexpected, aphoristic, violently observant and violently restrained: “to feel pain but never to come to tears”. You read because you want to know where they will take you next. She gives no hint.