Window Seat

These charming portraits of young girls living far from home, ‘secure’ in their illicit relationships, of young men full of RSS swagger, of old women waiting late in the night for their grown-up children to come home, capture the lives of ordinary people in vivid and varied hues. Spread across the socio-economic spectrum, these stories are like snapshots of interesting faces in a crowd; faces around whom the author deftly sketches lives and longings, pet ideas and prejudices, loves and hates with bold, confident strokes. From ‘Ganesha’, the story of a middle-class housewife waiting for her son to return at night and thinking of her other son who died in a road accident, to ‘A Game of Cards’ about a young urban woman sunning herself on the beach, these pithy sketches are a colourful montage of modern Indian life.