It was a quiet 92nd birthday at Nergis Dalal’s duplex on the upscale Rajpur Road in Dehradun on June 13. Her younger daughter Roshen was her companion. A few friends dropped in to wish Dalal a happy birthday.

Dalal had been one of India’s most well known and prodigious writers. She did not confine her writing to a particular genre; her writing range covered short stories, novels, ‘Middles’, and even books on cookery and yoga. Her output in seven decades was indeed enormous — it included four full length novels, over 125 short stories and more than 2,000 Middles, besides hundreds of articles and essays.