Mom in the City, novel sets trend of Mom Literature in India


Mom in the City' is a new novel by Kaushalya Saptharishi which is expected to hit the stands in September 2013. Mom in the City is a light and humorous work classified as Mom literature. The publishers of course, claim that this novel is the first of its kind in India. Well, claims are claims. What readers need at the end of the day is just a work of good fiction that must entertain them, surprise them, enthrall them and give a reason to think. Mom in the City has to pass through these parameters.

The description of the book reads like this: When Ira enrolls her 2-year-old son Abhi at Bumblebees, a posh playschool in Lutyens’s Delhi, little does she know what she’s getting herself into. The other moms are everything she’s not—Manolo-strutting, couture-sporting, perennially mani-pedicured women who zip around in sleek cars, hire the latest pop star for their kids’ birthday parties, take off to exotic locales at the drop of a hat, and are lost without their help.

Ira is at once fascinated, amused, and repulsed by their glittering lifestyles, and tries hard to match steps with them. In her eagerness to be accepted in this circle, Ira lets slip a lie about her marriage. A lie, if found out, could destroy her social position and lead to her being ostracized from this tight clique.
Mom in the City, thus, is an intimate and humorous portrait of a single mother battling it out in Delhi’s precarious cultural fabric.

Kaushalya Saptharishi is an editor with Aleph Publishers. This is her second book. Published by Ebury press, Mom in the City is priced Rs 199.

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