By Selma Carvalho

Longlisted for the Asian Prize for Fiction 2023, Mrinalini Harchandrai discusses her book. This story was inspired by my mother’s childhood experiences in 1961 Goa. So quite a fair bit of the details of life then have been reaped or borrowed from family stories itself. I myself spent my childhood summers visiting my grandmother’s home in Goa, so perhaps some facility with the tongue and an understanding of mindset nuances seeped into me over the years.