-
Intermission
He wondered why he, forty-four-year-old successful entrepreneur, faithful husband and competent father of a sixteen-year-old boy, a man with the stolidity of half his life behind him and the certainty of what lay ahead, should wait every morning for a glimpse of this girl, like a teenager in the first throes of an infatuation. From the author of the best-selling Keep the Change comes a new novel about Delhi’s suburbia. Set in Gurgaon, the dazzling face of modernity in India, Intermission takes us into the lives of Varun and Gayatri Sarin, not-so-happily-married corporate couple who are trying to come to terms with life in India after several years of an ordered existence in the First World. Varun is focussed on running his own business; Gayatri yearns for her friends and her life in the US. Their son Anirudh is grappling with his first adolescent crush. From intrusive in-laws and absconding domestic staff to potholes and pigs on the road, there is a new challenge to be confronted every day.Then Varun meets Sweety, young mother-of-twins, who is living her dream life in a nuclear family, and everything changes. For him, for Sweety, and insidiously, for everyone around them. A beautifully told story of illicit love and divided loyalties, Intermission explores lives within a gated community with just the right touch of irony and compassion.
-
Keep The Change
The uncoolness of her name plagues B. Damayanthi, along with the bunch of unsuitable prospective husbands her Amma throws at her, a dead-end job as an accountant in a decrepit firm, the oppressiveness of Chennai. When she finally jettisons her job and some of her inhibitions to join a bank in Mumbai, Amma’s parting words are: ‘Be good. Don’t do anything silly.’ Translation: ‘Stay away from sex and alcohol! ’ Soon Damayanthi is negotiating competitive corporate corridors and big-city life. Aided by dubious words of wisdom from the cherub-faced Jimmy, she must impress the intellectual C.G., who has a low opinion of her; battle Sonya Sood, flatmate and size-zero sophisticate, for the TV remote; choose between resisting or giving in to temptation in the form of the seductive Rahul; deal with the moral dilemma of ‘stealing’ a million-dollar idea for her project. Can a good girl have a really good time? Can the conservative, curd-rice-eating Damayanthi become a cool, corporate babe? Keep the Change is a rollicking, wickedly witty story of every girl’s journey to fulfil her dreams and find her own place in the world.