A clever device – a narrator who is losing her memory – ignites this novel of the modern family Meera Rajagopalan’s debut novel tells the story of an unexpected character, minus the Indian stereotype. Meera Rajagopalan. I see it in the headlines. I hear it during phone calls. I expect it whenever my mother knocks on my bedroom door. I fear it when I ask my friend about her aunt. It is hard to hear about death. But it is even harder to write about it. Meera Rajagopalan’s The Eminently Forgettable Life of Mrs Pankajamtraverses different kinds of death: the expiration of a marriage, admission of infidelity, and the worst of them all, the gnarly death of someone you love. Rajagopalan plucks these themes as one would pluck curry leaves, to drop them in a pool of oil in anticipation of the sizzle that bursts and burns the skin. Ma tells me the oil stops burning the more you cook, the older you get, and Pankajam’s diary entries assert this claim.