Even before Indian writing in English became the fashionable thing it is today, Nayantara Sahgal was a name to reckon with internationally. In Day of Reckoning: Stories, her first collection of short stories, one finds a familiar engagement with society, human rights and politics, and a Sahgalesque subversive take on tradition. A foreign journalist tries to make sense of a rapidly changing India even as a leading political leader is assassinated in...