A former communications and brand consultant, Mohua Chinappa has met women from diverse backgrounds, from a tribal Khasi woman who ran a tea stall to a journalist from the Northeast trying to fit in the big city to an unassuming college girl who could not anticipate the ‘consequence’ of her brutish rebuke to a man. So, in Nautanki Saala and Other Stories, an average bar dancer gives an old fart, the finger he deserves, many protagonists believe they are not enough. Most of the stories in the author’s debut book are based on the women and men she met in a span of two decades, from the early 80s to the 2000s. While the lives of the people are a testament to the cultural-economic shift in these decades, they are also an attempt to strengthen the feminist who hesitates in confiding.