Pratima Mitchell’s Indian Summer – Just A Good Written Story

This story begins in London in a house where Rita lives with her teenage daughter Sarla. They are planning their vacation over the summer break when all of a sudden Rita, who is a television reporter, gets a call to go report a war live and Sarla is furious at her mother for suddenly leaving her alone. Sarla longs for a suitable family and decides to travel to India to visit her maternal grandparents in Daroga, a hill station in India. Rita is shocked by this turn of events, but allows Sarla to travel to India. Sarla had been to India for the last time, six years ago, when her mother had a big fight with her parents and brought her back to London.

In India, Sarla meets her grandparents and another teenager, Bina, who is a little older than her but is very strange and mysterious in her own way. Bina is the granddaughter of Sarla’s grandparents’ domestic helpers. Here, the story takes many interesting twists and turns and soon Sarla discovers the problems in Bina’s life and why she is always serious and mysterious. A sudden crisis brings the two girls together and they become best friends.

Bina’s mother, Shobharani, is in jail because she was once the queen of the jungle bandits and the local villagers treat her like a goddess. Bina wants to study and become a doctor, but her grandparents are worried that she will get married and settle down before anyone finds out about her mother.

There is a side story of boys from the liberation front who try to collect weapons and money for the fight to get the mountain region to have the status of a separate state. This brings a political vision to the whole story. And of course there is a sweet teenage love story that runs in parallel, beginning with blushes, revelations, and ending in a strong lifelong bond.

There are more surprises in store for the reader towards the end as the various stories interconnect and unfold page by page. The relationship between Sarla and her mother Rita is shown to be a bit shaky at first, but towards the end it is shown that they have a heart-to-heart conversation as a mother and daughter and the special bond they share is clearly shown there.

A beautifully written work! Very well told story! The best aspect of this narrative was that it was narrated by the two central characters, Sarla and Bina, both teenagers, and the story was told in the way they saw the things that were happening around them and themselves. All the characters in the story are well recorded and distinctively portrayed.

The story takes place mainly in an Indian village and talks subtly about the problems faced by the poor and women in these parts of the world and points out the suffering and misery of women and girls as they are considered unwanted by their own parents. .