Hammock Snapshots are short flash fiction pieces, accompanied by an original illustration that aim to capture a moment, a feeling or a fragment of something without the pressures of longform writing. The series began on Instagram and now also features on our site.

There was an intimate connection between the two women, a familiarity and closeness that seemed to encapsulate centuries of behaviour and expectations. Within a couple of minutes, she was comfortable enough to shout about a stain on a coffee mug or the amount of spice in the aloo, then follow it up with an inquiry about the housing situation the maid was troubled by, promising her that she would make sure to pay the deposit so that no loan sharks were involved. 

For her daughter, visiting from America, it was mystifying, a demonstration of the kind of benevolent dictatorship whose unwritten rules were simply imprinted by generations of cultural tuning and caste dynamics and sociopolitical shifts, a harmony whose resonance could only be identified if you too had grown up in this kind of setting, where the life of one is always subordinate to the other. 

The daughter knew all of this, yet now she didn’t understand it, didn’t know whether it was better or worse than the alternative, didn’t know how to navigate the spaces between discomfort and gratitude and practicality, didn’t know which side she belonged on or whether she could command someone the same way.