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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.)

Women’s Dividend

Correspondent
4 hours ago
2 min read

India left the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games with a solid tally of 85 medals and fourth place in the continental table. That was 22 fewer medals than at Hangzhou in 2023, and the gold tally fell from 28 to 21. But judging our performance merely by the size of the haul misses the more interesting story. The country’s most striking gains came from its women, who won 11 of India’s 21 gold medals, more than half the country’s golds.


Their contribution was not confined to the predictable territories of cricket and hockey. They won in archery, shooting, boxing, athletics, wrestling, sailing, squash and combat sports.


That is a significant cultural shift as women’s sport in India has often been treated as a collection of exceptional individuals like a Mary Kom here, a P.V. Sindhu there, with each succeeding despite a system rather than because of it.


This Asian Games points to a deeper transformation given the variety of the breakthroughs. Kumkum Mohod became the first Indian woman to win an individual Asian Games gold in recurve archery, while India’s women ended South Korea’s 28-year domination of the team event. Neeru Dhanda’s trap gold ended a 48-year wait. Lovlina Borgohain returned to the top in boxing, while the women’s 4x400m relay supplied India’s only athletics gold.


A country cannot build a durable sporting system by relying on a handful of male stars or on cricket’s enormous commercial machine. It needs more athletes competing in more disciplines, with women increasingly forming the second half of that ecosystem.


There is another revealing feature. Indian women were prominent in events requiring individual skill, precision and endurance where success depends heavily on sustained coaching, equipment and competition rather than sheer physicality. That makes their progress a useful test of whether India is developing sporting institutions rather than simply producing prodigies.


At the same time, the Asian Games also exposes unfinished business. India collected 27 silver medals, some of whom were evidence of genuine progress while others were reminders that reaching the final step remains difficult. There is no denying that competition itself is getting stronger, making personal bests no guarantee of gold.


Nor should women’s success become an excuse to overlook the wider weaknesses. India’s athletics return was modest despite a large contingent, while several established disciplines underperformed. The fall from 107 medals at Hangzhou to 85 is therefore not a triumph disguised as disappointment. In that sense, it is a warning that depth remains uneven.


But the women offer a strong reason for optimism. Their performance suggests that Indian sport is slowly moving from the solo heroine to a repeatable system that produces several successful athletes. The real achievement of Aichi-Nagoya is that India is finally beginning to produce enough women capable of winning medals.

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