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The Heat And Dust Project
Living in a sunny barsati in south Delhi, Saurav Jha and Devapriya Roy are your average DINK couple, about to acquire a few EMIs and come of age in the modern consumerist world. Only, they don't. They junk the swivel chairs, gain a couple of backpacks and set out on a transformational journey across India. On a very, very tight budget - 500 rupees a day for bed and board. And The Heat and Dust Project begins. Joining the ranks of firang gap-year kids and Israeli boys and girls fresh out of compulsory army service, they travel across a whacky, whimsical land, where five thousand years of Indian history seem to jostle side by side. It is, by turns, holy and hectic, thuggish and comic, amoral and endearing. In buses that hurtle through the darkness of the night and the heat of the day, across thousands of miles, in ever new places, the richness of this crowded palette spills over into their lives. From rooms-by-the-hour to strange dinner invitations and spectacular forts and tantrums, this is a tale of the hysterical searching of youth, of eccentric choices and the supreme test of marriage.
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The Vague Woman's Handbook
They are bad with directions; they never know when the credit card bill is due. They have perfected the art of turning over a new leaf tomorrow. Meet the vague women in this delightful first novel that doesn’t star a woman looking for the right man – because she’s already found him! At twenty-two, Sharmila Chatterjee has just married her sweetheart of a few years, Abhimanyu Mishra, a somewhat eccentric if handsome twenty-three-and-a-half year old with obscure academic interests and a small fellowship that never arrives on time. They start a household in a tiny rented flat, learning to fend for themselves in the big, bad and snotty world of south Delhi, with penny-pinching landlords, some romance, and a lot of anxiety. At fifty-two, Indira Sen is not sure just how she meandered to where she finds herself now. A senior government officer and single mother, she lives with her daughter and three opinionated old people in a rambling house, drives a battered car, and has a history of credit-card induced shopaholism. The Vague Woman’s Handbook is a story told with equal parts of humour, hysteria and tenderness, about the sparkling friendship between two women as they hurtle through life and its mini-crises while trading secrets in the art of survival.