Contents: Foreword/Ramdas Bhatkal. Introduction/Malati Bedekar. I. Short stories: her story, our story: 1. Come, hear their whispers. 2. Sacrifice. 3. The light within. 4. Avinash. 5. Love: nectar or poison? 6. My mother, my enemy? 7. Married bliss? 8. Empty vessels. 9. My father's family or mine? 10. Divine love or animal passion? 11. With eyes wide open. II. Novella: On the swing: 12. A critic's note/Shridhar Vyankatesh Ketkar. 13. Translator's note/Yashodara Deshpande Maitra.

"In the short stories, Vibhavari Shirurkar (the pseudonym of Malatibai Bedekar), had bravely written on the complex yearnings of young girls, touching upon their sexuality and their tentative steps to an inchoate self-hood, and in the novella, of an abandoned wife's courage in forming a new relationship. This outraged middle class respectability. When the yet undiscovered author's effigy was burnt on the streets of Pune, the pseudonym used protected her.

In the 1976 edition of Kalyanche Nishwas (Popular Prakashan), the author added a note on the public reaction to this work when first published, which has also been included in this volume. She declared that her portrayal of young working women being financially exploited by their fathers, of their being drawn towards devious men despite themselves, or their severe stress as widows or abandoned wives, was a diluted version; the reality was much worse.

These fictional works, translated into English from the original Marathi for the first time, and accompanied by a critical note, written in 1933, by the sociologist and Marathi Encyclopaedist S.V. Ketkar, are like a slice of social history. Together, Her Story, Our Story and On the Swing speak about women who loved and lost, despaired, doubted the choices they made, yet made them nevertheless."