Set in a winsomely evoked Tiruchirapalli of the sixties, The Finger Puppet, describes the special girlhood years - of jasmine and pinhead bindis, convent school and Carnatic music, temple idols and Raja Ravi Varma paintings - that eleven-year old Tara shares with her two sisters. It is a childhood enriched by her mother's gentleness, her vast store of mythological tales and her understanding of the Vedas; but made sordid by her Westernized father's arbitrariness and abuse. As her father's temper expresses itself in increasingly violent ways, Tara wants only to retreat further into her imaginary world, but her tiny alter-ego eggs her on to take a less forgiving stance. A sensitively recounted growing up tale of an awkward and abused young girl's passage to adolescence, The Finger Puppet masterfully captures the light and dark shades of childhood.