Can a young woman shape her own destiny without fracturing the roots she springs from? This question underlies the emotional current of Parul Kapur’s novel, Inside the Mirror.
As India shook the dust of colonialism from its shoulders, everything shimmered with possibility. Set in the vibrant times of 1950s Bombay, the novel follows 19-year-old twin sisters Jaya and Kamlesh Malhotra as they stand at the intersection of obedience and individuality. Born into a respected Punjabi family, the girls are offered what many would call privilege.
Kapur renders the Malhotra household as a microcosm of a nation in flux, bruised but hopeful, aspiring towards progress while still shackled to propriety. The father is emblematic of this paradox. Forward-thinking by most measures, he has mapped out their futures – one in medicine, the other in teaching. These are professions that promise security and respect. He does not question whether the ambitions he permits are his daughters’ own, because he does not need to. He believes that education equals emancipation, that opportunity is freedom. But ambition handed down, however benevolently, can bind just as tightly as any prohibition.
Portrait of two artists in becoming
Jaya Malhotra enters medical college not out of desire but with a sense of dutiful inertia. Inside, she harbours dreams of becoming an artist. The hospital compound, dense with the scent of formalin and suffering, alienates her from the very profession her father deems noble. They say artists are sensitive beings. For Jaya, this sensitivity becomes both a burden and a compass. It is through art that she begins to recover herself.
Amidst this, a romance also blooms for Jaya. Kapur treats this thread with a light touch. Kirti Dasgupta, a charming senior whose presence at first seems to promise both mentorship and affection, but is also casually steeped in the kind of entitlement that often passes unnoticed in men of ambition. He admires Jaya’s intensity but doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Their love is not any destiny-altering epic but it does shape Jaya’s own longing to not just create art but who she must insist on being.
She gets to know about Group 47, a fictional version of the Progressive Artists’ Group that was founded in 1947. This collective, rooted in post-independence urgency, speaks of reinventing Indian Modern Art. Jaya finds resonance in them, but more importantly, she meets her mentor – Sringara. Through Sringara, both the reader and Jaya get a glimpse of the figure of a woman who has chosen art as her existence. She is unapologetically herself, assured in ways that Jaya aspires to be. “An artist,” Jaya thinks, “had to be an extremist.”
This thought isn’t romanticised but rendered with quiet conviction as the story unfolds. To be an artist is to risk exile, from family, from respectability and from comfort. Kapur does not glamorise this transformation. Instead, she allows it to build slowly through sketches, conversations, and Jaya’s restless inner gaze.
If Jaya’s rebellion is painted on a canvas, Kamlesh’s unfolds in measured rhythm. While she pursues a BA, her heart beats to the cadence of Bharatanatyam. She is excited for her upcoming arangetram, her debut solo performance. She spends hours refining her posture, her expressions, and the intricate mudras of the dance. It is clear that she genuinely loves it. In these moments, Kamlesh isn’t fulfilling anyone else’s dreams. There is a humming urgency in her desire to be seen, not just a daughter or twin, but as a performer, a woman who can hold the gaze of a room and decide what it sees. But in a Punjabi household unfamiliar with the cultural vocabulary of South Indian classical dance, its declaration feels rather scandalous. “No respectable girl displayed herself like that in public,” the family frets. It is less about the dance and more about the questions, whispers, and judgment it will invite.
We witness the events of her journey, but rarely are we allowed to enter her mind with the same intimacy that is afforded to Jaya. While the novel sublimely lingers in Jaya’s uncertainty with her slow-burning rebellion and her inner struggles, Kamlesh is often glimpsed in motion. In many ways, she functions more as a foil than a fully fleshed-out counterpart. It is a loss, because it is a novel invested in female coming of age, and Kamlesh’s partial opacity feels like an opportunity left only half-realised.
In the shadow of history
Kapur captures the post-independence mood, bearing its wounds from Partition with a steady hand. The Malhotra household is not untouched either. People arrive at their home seeking shelter as they attempt to rebuild their lives from the rubble. It reminds us how history forms an important part of our being.
Bebeji, the twins’ grandmother, is one of the most compelling links to this past. She was a local leader at the Lahore Congress Committee and participated in the independence movement. She even witnessed its bloody aftermath. Yet, the scars do not quiet her. Infused with the spirit of doing good, she runs a program for a slum colony. Her social consciousness becomes a kind of unspoken inheritance, one that both Jaya and Kamlesh absorb, even as they try to shape their own. Bebeji’s presence deepens the girls’ arcs. She has already pushed the boundaries of a woman’s place in society in her own ways. And, survived it too. The legacy she offers is a living reminder that independence, whether personal or political, is never without cost.
In the acknowledgements, the author writes that this book has undergone a long journey, written and rewritten until it found its final form. That journey is visible in the novel’s bones. It bears the marks of careful research. The social fabric of 1950s Bombay, the post-Partition tensions, especially the evolving conversations around art, painting, and classical dance, are rendered with care without feeling like a lecture. Kapur strikes a rare balance when lyricism enhances the prose rather than making it feel ornamental. The passages detailing the social work and issues of the slum colony can feel like a detour from the story but, their effect is undeniable in hindsight. They add an emotional layer that grounds the story in lived socio-political reality. The novel would have been flatter without them.
The story plays on a timeless conflict of self versus society. The girls want to find their own identity and purpose, while the family holds on to their reputation in society like fragile currency.
“A girl pulling herself out of the web of her family could cause the entire web to tear and collapse”
That web is made up of duty, obligation, and the ever-present weight of “log kya kahenge”, whichis the real antagonist of their world. In different ways, both sisters push against what has been chosen for them to pursue lives of their own making. The novel doesn’t pretend that making such a choice is easy. The slow drift between the twins, resulting distance from family, becomes a quiet but aching sign of what is risked when one refuses to stay within the lines. By its end, Inside the Mirror asks us not only to witness this transformation but also to sit with its cost.
Inside the Mirror, Parul Kapur, University of Nebraska Press.
