The stories in Yellow Is the Colour of Longing are unabashedly critical of the status quo. They pull the lid off normal, everyday life in families and the workplace, sometimes cheekily, sometimes with astoundingly bitter sadness. While ‘What the Souls Do at Midnight’ and ‘A Cat, Utterly Personal’ acerbically trace the subtle forms of control exercised on women, the title story explores the absurdity of desire, and ‘The Saga of Krishna’ refers directly to the series of ‘sex-racket’ cases that created a huge uproar in recent times in Kerala.

This selection showcases Meera’s impressive range of narrative techniques and her capacity for dark humour. Appropriately, Devika’s translations are hardly faithful in the conventional sense. They are, rather, the result of careful consideration of the different senses of meaning that Meera’s writing holds, and of the effort to convey the unique texture of each of her stories.