IRONY AS AN INTRINSIC FEATURE IN SHORT STORIES BY KHUSHWANT SINGH

Khushwant Singh as a short story writer pursues and follows the art of short story as in its early twentieth century. He is considered as a realist and humanist in one, and this picture of him is revealed in his stories. The stories reveal his gentle irony and his faculty of being ironical on the part of his countrymen. Irony forms one of the basic characteristics in his style of story writing. Irony in its literal sense is considered as a device with dual or two meaning: One the literal or actual meaning and the second which bring other meaning in the sentence or situation than the actual one, in other words Irony is the word that says one thing but means another. Irony arises due to the interrelation between these two states of meaning, since one state seems to negate the other one and this contrast assume a striking effect. LANGUAGE IN INDIA, www.languageinindia.com Vol. 6: 4, 2006 Irony in Kushwant Singh's Short Stories 2 Irony in Khushwant Singh’s is sometimes expressed by a sentence expressing different thing than what is said. It also arises from a discrepancy between the expression and realization. Even sometimes the character and situation as seen are different from what they mean. These types of description in all make the work ironical. “THE VOICE OF GOD