Tell Me A Story (P)

Set partly in the small, buzzing town of Amritsar and partly in New Delhi, this is the story of Rani, a young woman in contemporary India. She enjoys her work in a local beauty parlour, loves telling bedtime stories to her little nephew, and is blissfully in love with Shahrukh Khan, the movie star. However, her naturally happy disposition is marred by the real world. Her lower middle-class family lives in a state of constant struggle–to make ends meet, to hang on to their dreams, to keep their fragile lives from collapsing.

However, as their financial troubles escalate, so do Rani’s sister-in-law’s taunts, brother’s frustration and father’s resignation. Emotions run high. Rani’s stories dry up. And here begins Rani’s solitary journey of love and loss. Random events happen that affect each of them, changing their lives forever.

And Rani finds herself in Delhi, in a sudden head-on collision with a world completely alien to her. She finds an unlikely ally in her employer, Sadhna, a stalled novelist, who has been unable to function in a savage literary marketplace.

Tell Me A Story displays remarkable clarity and depth in drawing up the real semi-urban living in India. Fragile and touching, it reminds us of how thin and tenuous are the connections which bind us to our illusory, sane-seeming lives.