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A Touch of Brightness centers on Rukmini, a girl sold to a brothel in Mumbai and her relationship with Pidku, a street urchin, who tries desperately to rescue her from her life as a prostitute. Rukmini mesmerizes Pidku with her visionary stories of the Gods and her dreams of a married life. Even in a brothel, her extravagant optimism never ceases but only deepens. Doongaji House, winner of the Sultan Padamsee Award, deals with the last years of Hormusji, a partriarch fallen on lean days who strangely combines, in the face of penury and a disintegrating family, youthful idealism with fanatical orthodoxy. Hormusji is endowed with a strong zest for life. Yet, something has sapped it. What is this unspoken secret, often touched upon tangentially by him and his wife, Pooja, but never openly discussed? Cyrus Mistry uses the conventions of traditional Parsi farce only to stand them on their head and create a play that moves from comedy to pathos and sentimentality, through heights of great dramatic tension and moments of deep tragedy. Though rooted in the life of one small, unique community, the play’s themes are universal and existential: the common human yearning for joy in life thwarted by incomprehensible forces; the ultimate loneliness, anguish and vulnerability of all human beings.