‘Inside the Mirror’: A coming-of-age novel set in the 1950s gets women’s desire for true freedom

Can a young woman shape her own destiny without fracturing the roots she springs from? This question underlies the emotional current of Parul Kapur’s novel, Inside the Mirror.

As India shook the dust of colonialism from its shoulders, everything shimmered with possibility. Set in the vibrant times of 1950s Bombay, the novel follows 19-year-old twin sisters Jaya and Kamlesh Malhotra as they stand at the intersection of obedience and individuality. Born into a respected Punjabi family, the girls are offered what many would call privilege.

Kapur renders the Malhotra household as a microcosm of a nation in flux, bruised but hopeful, aspiring towards progress while still shackled to propriety. The father is emblematic of this paradox. Forward-thinking by most measures, he has mapped out their futures – one in medicine, the other in teaching. These are professions that promise security and respect. He does not question whether the ambitions he permits are his daughters’ own, because he does not need to. He believes that education equals emancipation, that opportunity is freedom. But ambition handed down, however benevolently, can bind just as tightly as any prohibition.

Portrait of two artists in becoming

Jaya Malhotra enters medical college not out of desire but with a sense of dutiful inertia. Inside,...

Read more

News