Nearly 400,000 women in Kerala work outside their homes. The situation of working women is dealt with in two stories, Fraction (93) and The Riddles in Life (99). In Fraction the wife takes time off from work because she is sick, but she doesn’t get time off from her kitchen duty. Her husband does not do anything to help her in the kitchen, or help their daughter with her homework. The wife is unable to deal with the stress of combining a career with housework and a daughter who needs help with her homework as her husband doesn’t care to help with any of these even when she is sick. In a moment of rage, she commits suicide.


The working woman in Riddles in Life is a doctor. She divorces her husband who is always away on travel. This story is movingly written about by their daughter who is torn between the parents. She loves her father very much but at the same time, is “unable to cross the boundary of her mother’s love.” Children of divorced parents being pulled in different directions is a common occurrence in Western countries. People in many countries will identify with this story. One noteworthy point about this story is that in the eyes of the daughter, there is no malice in all these decisions. The story is written by a young writer who has received awards from the time she was an undergraduate student, now completing her Ph.D in English Literature. Asha Krishnan received the Rajalakshmi Memorial award for this story.

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