India, March 21 -- "We may not have read two books - but at least our underarms are fair and fragrant." Thus goes one of the many wayward remarks of Avtar Kaur, also known as Bibiji. She lives in her ancestral estate in Raigarh, close to Ludhiana in Punjab. Most of her family have left or died; her only companion is her servant, Nachhatar, who drives her around and takes care of the dwindling estate. Bibiji's reflections, dour yet amusing for their quirkiness, are the points on which Amarjit Sidhu's novel, A River Runs Back, unspools. It begins with Nachhatar driving her to Ludhiana to attend her brother Baljit Singh's funeral. The story's different strands come in bits and snatches, with the flow of her thoughts and memories. When Bibiji was a child, her family moved to Punjab from Rangoon, Burma, to escape the threat of Japanese bombings during World War 2. She was married to the son of a landlord, who passed out drunk on their wedding night, never to wake up again. Her brother Baljit married for love, much to Bibiji's disdain, and failed at the numerous businesses he started. According to her, her sister Hardev was the only one who had "made some sort of success with her life". While studying at Oxford, she met a man from a "good Sardar background" with huge landholdings, and eventually became an affluent socialite, a "woman of the world". Bibiji laments the slipping away of the world she grew up in. She is dismissive of modern notions of liberty and of people stepping outside their social station and caste. The latter, she rues, has become a bad word. Dismayed by the chaotic driving in Ludhiana, she notes, "They drove the way they were taught when given their freedom and democracy." Her village, she says, has more migrants than "original families" and "everything appeared to be sinking under the weight of the rapidly multiplying mostly migrants". Rather than just a cantankerous geriatric, though, she is someone at odds with the world. Overwhelmed by Hardev's hectic social life, Bibiji realised that "her moments of happiness rarely included people. They had parrots, peacocks, doves, and ducks aplenty, along with spacious areas, and many trees..." It is these multiple dimensions to her personality that make Bibiji a compelling character, even though one does not share her views. Nostalgia and memory are overarching themes in the novel. The author embodies them in the plot structure and writing style. The narrator repeatedly dredges up the past. This narrative technique is summed up in one of Bibiji's ruminations: "When did the past end and the present begin? Was it yesterday, the year before, or many years ago? Was it all a dream?" The novel also goes beyond memories as intangible entities to explore their more physical manifestations. In one of the few instances where the story decentres Bibiji, it focuses on Nachhatar as he walks through Raigarh, charting its landmarks redolent with associations. His peregrinations are reminiscent, in some kind of way, of James Joyce's characters mapping Dublin with their feet. Given how repetition and fluidity shape the plot, the novel could have easily been monotonous. That this never happens is testament to Sidhu's firm control of his craft. His writing is restrained and steers largely clear of the sentimental. The past comes alive through richly detailed recollections. It also lives in the ossified beliefs that Bibiji drags into a changed world. The decline of the feudal order in India has often served as fodder for fiction. However, where literary works such as Bimal Mitra's Saheb Bibi Golam (1953) and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's Jalsaghar (1930s), both later made into films, suffused their storytelling with biting social commentary, the tale of Bibiji's disenchantment focuses on her individual worldview rather than with social underpinnings. Which isn't to say A River Runs Back does not touch on the dissolution of social hierarchies, and the chaos of migration. The reader just sees these as Bibiji's observations. Their depiction as forces moulding people's lives is less explicit. This does not make the narrative any less absorbing. In its exploration of memory, the novel also has parallels with Ranbir Sidhu's Dark Star (2022). Both authors have roots in Punjab and have lived abroad. As migration continues to reshape Punjabi society, memories and displacement are likely to remain catalysts in stories....