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By:

Rupali Sethi

6 January 2026 at 8:01:30 pm

A Quiet Mirror of Life

Literature need not depend on extraordinary events to uncover extraordinary truths. A fleeting encounter, a childhood memory, a family ritual or an apparently insignificant incident can expose the deeper tensions of human nature. Sundar Viswam’s Mortal Remains and Other Stories, a collection of eleven stories, takes this route. Love, friendship, family, ambition, migration, morality, betrayal, prejudice and destiny emerge not through grand dramas but through ordinary lives. Viswam’s...

A Quiet Mirror of Life

Literature need not depend on extraordinary events to uncover extraordinary truths. A fleeting encounter, a childhood memory, a family ritual or an apparently insignificant incident can expose the deeper tensions of human nature. Sundar Viswam’s Mortal Remains and Other Stories, a collection of eleven stories, takes this route. Love, friendship, family, ambition, migration, morality, betrayal, prejudice and destiny emerge not through grand dramas but through ordinary lives. Viswam’s particular talent is to find the consequential in the commonplace: a kite, a wedding invitation, a rumour or a sudden turn of fate becomes a way into larger questions about how people behave. The title story, “Mortal Remains”, sets the reflective tone of the collection by asking what survives an experience in memory, in creativity and in the emotional lives of others. The stories repeatedly return to that question. What people carry with them, and what they leave behind in others, often matters more than the event itself. Characterisation is perhaps the collection’s greatest strength. Viswam does not arrange his people conveniently into heroes and villains. They are contradictory, ambitious, vulnerable and morally uncertain. In “Mortal Remains”, a writer’s compulsive attachment to his art becomes an exploration of creative obsession, loneliness and the uneasy relationship between life and artistic expression. “The Red Kite” turns childhood friendship and rivalry into a painful memory, showing how an apparently innocent episode can acquire significance over a lifetime. “Manda oh my Manda!” inhabits the uncertain territory between affection and self-interest, while “The Invitation” uses an ordinary social ritual to expose family bitterness. “Falling Out” examines the slow deterioration of friendship when concealed perceptions come to the surface; “Brother in Need” places adolescence against a backdrop of corruption and insecurity. The psychological force of these stories comes less from explanation than from behaviour. Fear, guilt, longing, jealousy and regret surface in dialogue, hesitation and silence. Viswam trusts such details to do much of the work, allowing his characters to reveal themselves rather than having the author explain them. The collection also acquires a wider social and philosophical dimension. “The God of Chance” considers the role of coincidence and destiny in human relationships. “Regrettably, Yours” offers a perceptive account of the immigrant experience, where professional achievement does not necessarily settle questions of identity and belonging. “A Matter of Principle” explores the uneasy distance between conviction and practical reality, while “Just Token” examines how moral compromise can begin with choices that appear too small to matter. In “Pleasanton”, the rumour of an Indian lottery winner unsettles a community and brings prejudice, aspiration, insecurity and curiosity to the surface. The common thread is consequence. Small incidents can produce disproportionate emotional effects; private compromises can reveal larger moral questions. Society, in Viswam’s hands, is not merely a backdrop but a mechanism for exposing character. His interest lies in the point at which chance becomes consequence and an everyday decision acquires moral weight. Viswam writes with clarity and restraint, moving comfortably between tenderness, irony, humour, social observation and introspection. His vocabulary serves the story rather than calling attention to itself. Carefully chosen details establish atmosphere without burdening the narrative with description. There is an appealing economy to the writing. That restraint is particularly effective in moments that might otherwise invite melodrama. Readers are consequently free to make their own judgments rather than being directed towards them. The result is prose that is accessible without being thin, and psychologically attentive without becoming ponderous. Ultimately, Mortal Remains and Other Stories succeeds because it treats human beings as complicated creatures rather than moral specimens. Its characters love, fear, desire, compromise, remember and regret, often simultaneously. Viswam does not hurry to judge them; circumstances and choices are allowed to expose their contradictions. The title therefore assumes a wider significance. What remains after an experience is rarely the experience itself. It is the memory, the emotional imprint and the alteration it leaves behind. Viswam finds these residues in ordinary lives and turns them into occasions for reflection. His stories suggest that profound literature need not search for exceptional lives. It can begin with ordinary people, provided the writer observes them with sufficient patience, empathy and curiosity. That is what makes the collection linger. Its stories do not offer easy moral conclusions. Instead, they encourage readers to recognise familiar emotions in unfamiliar lives — and perhaps to see their own lives a little differently. (The writer is a literary critic, book reviewer and scholar of Hindi and English literature.)

India waits to lasso diamantaire Mehul Choksi

Quaid Najmi
Apr 14, 2025
5 min read

Mumbai: India rubbed its hands gleefully as the Belgium Police honoured its request to arrest the absconder diamantaire Mehul Chinubhai Choksi – more than seven years after he, along with his nephew Nirav Deepak Modi - allegedly duped the Punjab National Bank of nearly Rs. 13,800-crores.

 

The scam involving the ‘Mehul Mama-Nirav Bhanja’ erupted in Jan 2018, after the PNB lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

 

By then the kin, along with many of their family members, winked and slipped out of the country, leaving a rattled India rubbing its palms in disappointment.

 

A political-cum-financial storm raged, embarrassing the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a year before the Lok Sabha elections.

 

Multiple agencies launched a multi-pronged probe into what became the biggest banking scam in the past quarter century – and almost four times bigger than the stock market-cum-banking fraud the late Big Bull Harshad Mehta had inflicted on the Indian economy 33 years ago (in April 1992) – when it was just opening up.

 

In Belgium

According to official reports, Choksi was living with his Belgium citizen-wife Preeti in Antwerp, a global diamond hub, presumably for the past 18 months on a ‘residency permit’ acquired through questionable means, for medical reasons.

 

Earlier, he shot to the headers (June 2021) while being taken in a wheelchair to a court by the Dominican Republic's Police on charges of sneaking into the small country in the Caribbean Sea, North America.

 

Interestingly, as the Antigua & Barbuda government initiated the process to cancel his citizenship acquired through an investor visa, Choksi had suddenly gone ‘missing’ till he surfaced in the Dominican Republic.

 

The April 2025 action by Belgium followed a request by India’s CBI and the financial frauds specialist Enforcement Directorate (ED) to nab Choksi as the InterPol had revoked his Red Corner Notice in 2023.

 

Mama and Bhanja

‘Mama’ Choksi is the founder-owner of Gitanjali Group while ‘bhanja’ Nirav’s Firestar plus other companies – and the duo, with some PNB officials hand-in-glove – conspired to make a ‘mamu’ of not only PNB, but other banks, as it subsequently tumbled out.

 

After making a quiet exit, Choksi was detected living in the verdant Antigua & Barbuda Isles (West Indies), then attempted entry to the Dominican Republic, was sent back to Antigua & Barbuda and then went to Belgium where he was nabbed on Sunday.

 

Similarly, Modi was found sauntering on the streets of London and nabbed in March 2019. He remains in jail there since India's extradition is still pending.

 

However, India is keeping its fingers crossed that it may finally lay hands on Choksi, bring him to India and face trial in the PNB scam, though it may take time.

 

Born in Mumbai (1959) and educated in Gujarat, Choksi, 66, and wife Preeti have three children.

 

The Rs. 13,800-crore PNB scam

In the modus operandi revealed after India’s second-largest PSU bank PNB admitted it was scammed, Choksi and Modi used fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoU) to get overseas credits or loans from Indian banks.

 

The PNB first informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of the fraud and then lodged a criminal complaint with the CBI in Jan. 2018, plus another CBI complaint in Feb, that led to a FIR against Modi and Choksi and their companies.

 

The ED entered the scene to probe the allegations of money-laundering through the LoUs – which they allegedly misused to avail short-term business finances from foreign branches of Indian banks.

 

The probe said that the duo were availing the LoUs from the PNB’s Brady House Branch from March 2011, and over the next six-seven years, managed to get a whopping 1,200-plus LoUs like a breeze with the help of some friendly bankers within.

 

Post-scam, the gold-diamond companies Gitanjali Group and Firestone Group with multiple operations in India and abroad have largely wound up, while some personal assets of the mama-bhanja have been auctioned to recover a part of the dues.

 

ED's plea to declare Choksi fugitive stuck for seven years

Even as absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, a key accused in the Punjab National Bank loan fraud case, has been arrested in Belgium, the ED's plea to declare him a fugitive economic offender has been pending before a court in Mumbai for nearly seven years.


Choksi, 65, and his nephew diamantaire Nirav Modi are the prime accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB bank loan fraud case. Choksi was arrested in Belgium following an extradition request by Indian probe agencies, official sources said on Monday.


The Enforcement Directorate had filed the application in July 2018, seeking to declare Choksi an FEO and confiscate his assets under provisions of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act.


However, the matter has witnessed repeated delays owing to a barrage of applications filed by the accused in the PMLA court and the Bombay High Court alleging procedural lapses in the Enforcement Directorate's plea.


"The court is kept busy with frivolous applications, and hearing on our application to declare him (Choksi) an FEO has been adjourned for the past seven years,” an ED officer had said after the hearing was once again deferred this February.


"The court should have continued the hearing and taken a decision on the future course of action once the application was moved," the officer had said.

He had urged the court to take note of the repeated filing of similar applications and to not entertain them.


Choksi's lawyer had informed the court that the accused was undergoing treatment for suspected cancer in Belgium and intended to file an application in connection with his health.


Under the FEO Act, an individual can be declared a Fugitive Economic Offender if a warrant has been issued against him for an offence involving Rs 100 crore or more and he has left India while refusing to return. Once declared an FEO, the person's property can be confiscated by the investigating agency.


Choksi had challenged the ED's application in the Bombay High Court, alleging that the agency "had not followed proper procedure before filing the application and, hence, it stands vitiated".


However, in September 2023, the High Court dismissed his plea, ruling that the ED had adhered to the prescribed format under the FEO Act. It also vacated a stay on the special court's proceedings.


Despite this, the hearing on declaring Choksi FEO could not commence, with Choksi continuing to file applications before the special court through his lawyers.


While most of these pleas have been dismissed, a few remain pending. His latest attempt to stall proceedings through a plea to recall the notice issued on the ED's FEO application was rejected in December 2023.


According to ED officials, Choksi left India under suspicious circumstances in early January 2018.


Shifting stance

Choksi's counsel has argued that the ED kept shifting its stance on the material grounds for declaring him an FEO and that the suspension of his Indian passport made it impossible for him to return for investigation.

The court, however, rejected this argument, stating that the notice was issued based on accurate information and not based on "wrong facts or mistaken assumptions".


ED claimed the accused left the country under suspicious circumstances in the first week of January 2018.


Nirav Modi has already been declared as an FEO by the special court. He has been lodged in jail in London since 2019.

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