The frontrunner to be India’s next prime minister is apparently the nation’s Shakespeare

NEW DELHI, India — When you’re the chief minister of a huge state and the frontrunner to be India’s next prime minister, all things are possible.

Including, it seems, becoming the celebrated author of a collection of eight literary short stories.

Narendra Modi’s book “Abode of Love” hit the bookstores at the beginning of April, in the midst of a month-long election, ending May 12, to decide who will run the world’s largest democracy.

Speaking of power, here’s an innovation that has even eluded American marketers: The reviews of Modi’s stories are, unconventionally, placed inside the book. Each of the eight tales is followed by a critique by a noted Gujarati author or academic.

Many of these reviews take more space than the actual stories.

To call them “fawning” may be an understatement.

Modi, according to the so-called critics, is a “prolific storyteller,” “an able and capable storyteller,” “an author who successfully touches the hearts of his readers more than once,” “a poet of the highest calibre.”

It goes on: “Gujarat has lost a great storyteller,” a writer who has “given a shape to the roaring ocean of emotions in his heart,” who has penned “such tenderly written and inspiring works,” that reminded one critic of Chekhov. Another implored, “I only wish to have more such gems from his pen.”

If Narendra Modi fails in his bid to run this nation, he will surely be India’s next Shakespeare.

The 63-year-old candidate for the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party turned his hand to writing between 1975 and 1977. During those years, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had called a state of emergency which banned most political activity, forcing Modi-the-politician to kick up his heels and brandish a pen.

Since then the stories, written in Gujarati, have been resting in Modi’s notebook, while the man has gone from minor political aide to chief minister of Gujarat and runaway favorite to win India’s highest office.

“Abode of Love” was published after the “prodding of friends and well-wishers” according to the publisher, Rajpal. The English translation appeared at the beginning of April.

It is impossible to read Modi’s collection without considering the gulf in experience between the twenty-something author and the fearsome politician whose charismatic rallies even seem to have convinced Pakistanis that he is the right man to lead India.

Modi’s opponents, some of whom refer to him as the Butcher of Gujarat, will look for traces of Godhra. Was there anything in the young Modi that might indicate the anti-Muslim riots of 2002 that led to the deaths of nearly 2000 people?

His supporters may wonder if the stories show anything of Modi the great developer, the politician credited — some believe wrongly — with the Gujarat success story, where power cuts are a thing of the past and businessmen queue up for Modi magic.

In fiction, Modi’s main themes are reliable ones for a politician. He stands for love, motherhood and if not apple pie or rasmalai then a certain sort of correctness about how to behave. These are not counter-cultural stories that pick apart social issues India faces, such as caste bigotry or women’s rights.

They are not overtly political either, with the exception of “Igniting Values,” a story about a young woman called Jharna to whom the “western way of life came naturally” but who realises by the end that a woman should sacrifice her own well-being for her husband’s. The idea chimes with the highly conservative ideals of some on the Hindu right who have beaten up women for going to pubs, or village councils which ban girls from wearing jeans.

Motherhood was clearly a concern for the young Modi, who may not have seen his own mother for several years when he wrote the stories. He walked out on his parents at the age of 18 over their insistence that he consummate a marriage arranged when he was a boy.

We are introduced to Sunanda, a young stepmother who struggles for two years to win over her teenage stepdaughter. After tension turns into angry words, Sunanda writes a letter to the girl saying she just wants to be a good mother. For the young Modi, this was enough to solve the relationship’s difficulties. The two young women hug and become firm friends. Any resentment the girl might have felt toward a woman who had replaced her own dead mother and usurped her father’s affections is gone in the scribbling of a few words. It is an easy, instant solution, a wish fulfilled. And Modi enjoys fulfilling wishes. He governs Gujarat by inspiration, according to his biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, often having an idea in the morning and driving his army of staff to implement it as soon as possible.

Yet “Abode of Love” is about death as much as it is about motherhood.

A recent death or an impending death is a theme in almost all the stories in Modi’s collection. Sunanda’s step-daughter misses her mother. Another story sees a young man lay flowers in memory of a political activist shot dead by police. “Room No. 9” tells of the final weeks of a cancer sufferer. “The Lamp” is about a new widow struggling to deal with her in-laws’ dislike. “Bridge” sees another widow remember her husband who died trying to save people caught in a collapsed temple. And “Rebirth of Anuraag” is about a teacher, Anuraag, who blames himself for the suicide of a pupil.

What are we to make of this melancholic Modi, a figure that is so at odds with the witty, energetic, macho politician whose own persona seems to have caught the imagination of millions of Indians?

Is this a sign of a troubled boy, who missed his parents and worried about them? Or was it an effort to understand and empathise with ordinary people he met as a political aide, an attempt to imagine what the pain of loss was like?

Modi gives us few clues. In his introduction, he speaks of his hope that the stories “have the fragrance and beauty of relationships, the ring of integrity and truth, melancholy contrasting with the flavors of blooming emotions and mirth.” Later, he asks his readers to try to find their own abode of love within their conscience, confident that he has found his. And when the election results are announced on May 16, India will know whether its own abode of love has room for Modi.