Pen Pals with a Difference
Kalpana Sharma
ENCOUNTER WITH KIRAN: FRAGMENTS FROM A RELATIONSHIP by Nayantara Sahgal Speaking Tiger Books, 2021, 146 pp., 450.00
February 2022, volume 46, No 2

I belong to a generation that grew up reading Nayantara Sahgal. Her early works, like her autobiography Prison and Chocolate Cake, captured for us a time that many of us had not personally experienced but could vividly imagine through her writings.

Even as India grew older, we aged and the idealism of youth began to lose some of its sheen, Nayantara Sahgal’s was a voice that never failed to make you pause and think.  She reminded us repeatedly that having the courage to speak out and to speak truth to power even if the ‘power’ is your first cousin, as in the case of Indira Gandhi, was possible, and indeed essential.  She is also one of those rare people, in a country where dynasty is a disease afflicting all professions, who has shown us through her life and her choices that being born into an illustrious family is not a passport to fame. Your work should speak for itself.

It is therefore little wonder that someone who had made a name for himself as a writer like Kiran Nagarkar fell hook, line and sinker under the Nayantara Sahgal spell. This slim book is the story of their ‘relationship’ as Sahgal calls it. It grew and deepened not by prolonged personal contact but through an exchange of emails over several years.

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