![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Their propulsive stories and well-developed characterizations, however, don’t quite compensate for the flat, even cartoonish, supporting characters, or for a romantic subplot involving Smita and a man she meets while reporting on the story, which reads like an afterthought. ![]() Both Meena’s recollections and Smita’s narrative contain moments of emotional clarity and terror. Speaking with Meena also forces Smita to confront long-hidden facets of her own past. Meena’s story both reinforces and complicates Smita’s preconceptions about India’s gender dynamics, religious divisions, and caste hierarchies. A young Hindu mother, Meena Mustafa, has accused her two brothers of killing her Muslim husband in a fire that also left Meena badly scarred. But when a colleague is badly injured while reporting on a murder trial that overlaps with Smita’s gender issues beat, Smita takes over the assignment. Despite traveling the world as a foreign correspondent, Smita Agarwal has not returned to India, the land of her birth, since her family left for Ohio when she was a teenager. Umrigar ( Everybody’s Son) returns to themes of India’s evolution and the transformative potential of women’s relationships in her uneven latest. ![]()
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