Dinika Amaral

At the start of this novelette (it is ~11K word), Dinika Amaral appears to be telling us 3 different stories in parallel: 2 set in the present Bombay, India and 1 whose time is not entirely clear from the start but is sometime in the past, pre-colonization.

In the present, 3 young women come to Bombay: 1 of them had had a bad experience in Britain and is here to reinvent herself by becoming a business woman; the other 2 are the daughters of a millionaire from Lichtenstein who are sent to India for a kind of a job interview for the family foundation's head position. They meet only briefly but they may as well have been the same person (even if one of them does not have the money) - ignorant and offensive to the locals, believing themselves to be superior. And yet, their circumstances makes them different. Their guides are as different from each other as possible as well and so is their experience when they end up at the same bazaar in Bombay.

Meanwhile in the past, 3 goddesses are vying for the attention of a mortal man (who is at least as vain as the 3 young women in the other strands of the story).

The story in the present shows India of all its weird glory - the people and the haggling, the monuments and the disrespect for the traffic laws, the servility of some of the people when the ex-colonizers (and their kin) are around and the attitudes of some of the visitors. The story in the past deals with the Indian Pantheon in a way which is almost erotic in places. As is expected, the two stories collide and the end wraps up and explains what really happened (at one point I was wondering if we are heading to an open ending that will let the reader make their own mind of what and how it happened.

It is a modern tale of goddesses and mortals. It falls strictly in the fantasy space for me but it is more of a folklore- and myths- based tale than straight fantasy. And the fact that it actually had a proper ending was almost surprising, in a good way.

The author was born and grew up in Bombay before moving to the States so she is writing about her town from experience. Using the name instead of Mumbai is intentional - one of the characters even complains about the name change. If a local author cannot decide how to call their own city, who can?

Working Titles (https://www.massreview.org/digital-mr/working-titles) is a digital only project by Massachusetts Review, allowing them to publish stories and essays that are too long for the printed magazine (usually between 7K and 25K words). They are not tied to the issues of the review and have their own schedule and numbering. This is the first of them; they seem to still be going strong.… (altro)