Mother of 1084

Calcutta, the early '70s, and Bachchan's sheltered upper-middle class Calcutta housewife and mother slowly reacts to the shock of her favourite son's bloody death amidst the repression of the city's revolutionary Naxalite movement by piecing together the life she never knew. Not quite your average tale of consciousness-raising, Nihalani's lucid but slightly ponderous story makes its familiar points about the inter-relationship of revolutionary endeavour and female emancipation, and the fundamental need for human connection, with a certain calm authority. In places it strikes a profound note, but in all the story isn't enough to support the almost meditative length and pace.