Yama’s story, ‘The Funerary Palm’ refers to the coconut palm saplings planted on the last remains of Amma who dearly held on to her only valuable possession: a gold necklace, ‘its beads shaped like grains of rice’ (p. 9), which is sold to pay for her funeral ceremony.
It is in Guwahati that Samar meets two of his closest friends—Rizu Kalita and Rana Singh Choudhury. Through this adolescent friendship the story moves forward. Samar’s friends carry their own baggage. Rizu was admitted to St. Joseph because his father, the much-loved Madhob Kalita did not want to lose both his sons to a revolution whose cause he was not sure of.
There are significant departures from the Mahabharata. Rajuna has two wives: Draupadi and Serikandi (Shikhandi) who fights for the Pandavas. Rajuna becomes an inveterate philanderer. On Duryudana’s command Sangkuni (Shakuni) transforms into dice and Arya Manggala becomes the gambling table.
In ‘Summers of Waiting’, Sita visits her ailing Tatha, her grandfather, who has raised her. Even before she arrives, she understands she must leave: ‘Twelve days was all she had.
But there is a third level which, as the book shows, comes via writing stories about people, mostly women—men too—who have experienced loss and grief. Thus, we have the canvas of the ten searing stories in this book filled with sisters grieving for sisters/brothers, mothers grieving for daughters/sons, and wives grieving for their partners.
Described as stories of love in the blurb of the book, When Jaya Met Jaggu and Other Stories explores various facets of love from romantic, platonic, familial, to even eternal love. The strength and weakness of a short story are both in the aspect of brevity—the currency of words