‘She had learnt that it was useless to complain, for he would remind her of her small-town background, even though her parents had moved out of there a long time ago and her father was a lecturer in the local university. Her Sundays before her marriage had been different. They had been spent in dreaming, reading and talking. She had spent Sundays cooking a meal slowly with her mother, whose eyes were watchful yet gentle, like a deer. That is what had made Meera into a rather unhurried and fabulous cook.’
Abha Iyengar’s stories in Big Daddy’s Chair move with deceptive simplicity, yet strike with astonishing force. Her characters inhabit the edges of society—women who appear ordinary at first glance, men wrestling with failure or desire, families fractured by silence—but Iyengar imbues each life with a startling vividness. These are people negotiating power, dignity, and survival in worlds that are often indifferent or hostile, and yet they carry within them an unexpected resilience.
What sets Iyengar’s storytelling apart is the way she blends the familiar with the unusual. Everyday moments slip almost effortlessly into darker, more mysterious spaces; realism mixes with myth, fantasy, and psychological depth in ways that feel both unsettling and deeply human. Her stories unfold gently, almost softly, before delivering endings that stay with the reader—not because they aim to shock, but because they reveal truths we didn’t expect to find.
Iyengar’s women, in particular, stand out. They refuse to remain confined by the roles assigned to them; they are flawed, capable, contradictory, vulnerable, and intensely alive. Though their lives are shaped by limits and pressure, their choices—often brave, sometimes morally complicated—make them compelling and fully convincing. In Iyengar’s hands, ordinary lives become powerful spaces of resistance and self-discovery. Each story lingers long after it ends, leaving the reader with an ache, a question, or a faint glimmer of hope.
With Big Daddy’s Chair, Abha Iyengar affirms herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Indian short fiction—fearless in her themes, graceful in her craft, and unafraid to walk into the darker corners of human experience to reveal some real facet.
Each set in a different space, the stories of Big Daddy’s Chair also lay bare the subtle power structures that govern family, society, and sexuality. Her protagonists, especially her women, live in environments marked by denial, betrayal, and systemic constraint; yet they do not appear as passive victims. Instead, they navigate their circumstances with varying degrees of resilience, cunning, and emotional intelligence. Their ordinariness is what gives the stories their strength: Iyengar refuses to idealize them, choosing instead to portray them with a clarity that invites both empathy and thoughtful distance.
Malati Mukherjee is a writer, translator and sometimes poet, based out of the Nilgiris.