India, May 17 -- There is a short story about a man and his mother that has stayed with me for almost eight years, ever since I first read it.

The story is Bagugoshe (Hindi for Pears) by Swadesh Deepak. I've written about Deepak before. He was the outstanding Hindi novelist, playwright, short-story writer and author of a one-of-its-kind memoir, Maine Mandu Nahin Dekha, on his seven-year battle with mental illness. (His own story had no firm ending: In 2006, at the age of 63, he walked out of his home in Ambala, Haryana, and was never heard from again.)

Bagugoshe shines a light on a different side of his story.

It is a striking portrait of a talkative, spirited old woman, written by her son with much love, yet with an absence of sentime...