When Priyadarshini Pannu, erstwhile editor and creative writer, decides to settle down in the outskirts of Chandigarh, she anticipates a quiet life with little excitement. This is the place where she hopes to resume her creative writing and produce another bestseller. However, as she works in a study overlooking a busy residential colony, she is inadvertently sucked into the lives of the people surrounding her. In particular, she finds herself drawn to Anamika Mehra who lives in Twitter House just across the road.Spots of Time, interspersed with a sprinkling of verse, traces the interweaving stories of these two women, moving back and forth in time, progressing through flashbacks and reminiscences. Tangential characters emerge from the margins, come to the foreground with their own stories, and then recede. As the story unfolds, the various pieces of the collage are linked together by the narratorial consciousness that observes, assimilates and records a myriad different experiences, ranging from professional hazards in and academic environment to more agonizing issues of parenting a special child while coping with personal aspirations and ambitions.The narratology is metafictional; the master narrative holds together several embedded little stories and yet is a coherent whole, inlaid with literary allusions, traversing an extensive terrain, from a tiny colony of the City Beautiful nestling in the Shivalik foothills to far-off places across vast oceanic distances.
Manju Jaidka is a Professor at the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh. A recipient of several international fellowships including a Fulbright Research Grant and two Rockefeller Fellowships, Professor Jaidka has several publications to her credit, including eight books of criticism, a play and a novel. She has travelled extensively, lectured at prestigious international institutions and is currently the Chairperson of the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi.
Narrator’s Preface—Settling In—Twitter House—At Break of Day—Unwanted Guests—Monkeys Come A-Calling—Small Surprises—Miserably Sistered—Monte Croce Re-Visited—Saving the Elephant—A Horsey Tale—Saying Adieu—And the Gods Got Drunk—Ginny Come Lately—Professorial Tor-Mentors—Grunting and Snorting—Bringing up Father—Call of the Running Tide—Stories and More—The Great Escape—Between Two Worlds—A Fistful of Mangoes—And I, Tiresias—When Doo Became a Star—Twilight—In Another Country—Epilogue
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