Description
This story is a first person’s account on growing up in an Indian middle-class family. The main character — Nadia — shares her adventures, mistakes and happiness with the reader. Though Nadia has grown up in a West Delhi-based middle-class Punjabi and an apparently a ñnormalî family, in her eyes her mumma ji and pupa ji and all the long distant jis are dysfunctional. This is a girl who wants to break away from the reality that has been created around her, for her but not by her. She wants to get away from the pre-ordained destiny of a middle-class society. She wants to make mistakes. She wants to get hurt. She wants to achieve something, anything in her life. She wants her achievement to mean something to her…her victory…rather than just producing babies. She wants to love and hate. She aches to be hated and despised by her mates. She wants to create her own reality. Her own future. Through her eventful adventures, the novel explores the myths in the society, the role of women, the perception people have about the second sex and the struggle to always hold one’s head high. I have tried to incorporate sarcasm — as that is how my character is. She is critical — sometimes even over-critical. She even justifies her mistakes, sometimes acknowledges them but never sits around and broods over them. The novel traces how a young girl grows up in the 90s in India, within the confines of a rigid middle-class society, to entering an era of casual sex, drugs, money and freedom.
