Civil Lines
by Radhika Swarup
In the early 1990s, Rupa Sharma founds a magazine and pens her first – and last – editorial:The future has never looked brighter. The fires of communal tension appear to have been vanquished. More women are entering the workforce than ever before, and everywhere I look, I see new possibilities. I see dialogue, I see tolerance, and I see openness. I see hope for myself and my colleagues, and for the two daughters I am bringing up to be fearless inheritors of this earth.Decades later, her daughter Siya travels to Delhi in the wake of her reclusive mother's death, leaving behind a failing relationship and an unravelling life. Waiting at home are her estranged sister Maya and a crumbling Lutyens behemoth that is proving too cumbersome to maintain.The two sisters rattle around the house until a cryptic note falls out from their mother's papers: I saw last night as a meeting between old friends. That you considered my conduct overfamiliar fills me with...