New Delhi, Feb. 15 -- In 2018, during what she repeatedly referred to as her "last interview" (with writer and journalist Ashutosh Bhardwaj), Hindi writer Krishna Sobti said, "Love, sex and death are the defining emotions of this planet. I have always tried to preserve space for them." Great writers, irrespective of language and culture, gravitate towards the Big Questions, holding nothing back. And Krishna Sobti was, by any standards, a literary titan.

Born 100 years ago this week on 18 February 1925 in the city of Gujrat, Punjab Province (Pakistan), Sobti is widely considered to be one the greatest Hindi writers of all time. The author of over a dozen works of fiction and several essay-collections, she produced era-defining novels in e...