Naina, passionate birdwatcher and mother of two, loses her children during an evening hike as she follows the trail of the rare Himalayan kalij pheasant. Even though ‘Birdsong at Twilight’ unspools over all of fifteen minutes, my heart was literally in my mouth through its seven pages. In ‘Jars of Gold’, a mother-in-law rules the household with an iron fist while ‘Sandwiched’ traces the hilarious consequences of the rivalry between a mother and daughter-in-law over the man they both love as son/husband. ‘R.C.’s First Holiday’ takes us on a pilgrimage to Rishikesh with a dour lawyer whose mother, wife, and daughter have always submitted to his tyrannical discipline.
But routine structures collapse during travel and the three women discover the possibilities and delights of disobedience: it is a world everyone can relate to. As these stories are quite short, we do not enter into the back stories, motivations or deep-seated impulses of the myriad persons who people them. And yet, the deft, quick strokes of this artist render the characters as alive as any high-resolution photograph!