She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and has lived between New York City and Bangalore, where she now lives with her husband and daughter.
Search review text. Pramod Biligiri. Debutant author Lavanya Sankaran provides many glimpses of life in Bangalore in this collection of short stories. Occasionally the stories fail to grip you or leave you wondering about the conclusion.
But her prose itself is sufficiently beautiful that you will be none the worse for having read them. The two stories I enjoyed most both featured female protagonists. The author is in her elements when she describes the atmosphere in a convent school in Bangalore in the first one, and a perfectly decorated house overlooking Lavelle Road in the other.
I do have a few quibbles. Often the plot got buried under elaborate descriptive paragraphs which did nothing to add to the whole, especially when the author stepped out of the above social world. For example, a second generation American-Indian humanities student is visiting her extended family in Malleswaram, Bangalore and that sets the stage for a cliched, lengthy description of a thread ceremony and discussions about Tambrahm culture.
You could be excused for thinking this came out of some writing assignment. The title story The Red Carpet is told from the point of view of a driver to a rich, widowed? There is also much description of hair, food and quite a few Ramu-s and Ashwini-s. It was also her style of speaking with her friends: curses, jokes, comments, and conversation of a frankness that, on the whole, made him grateful that he could barely follow the English they spoke.
It probably has its own history and past like all the others but the highlight of this city is not the rich Nawabi castles of the past, neither ancient temple heritage, nor British era monuments and architecture. The city is the symbol of the Rise of the Indian Middle Class. Ordinary educated people working and earning a home and living for their families are the identity of this city and the nation.
So in this middle class city with middle class people living their middle class lives and discussing their middle class mentality — what can one expect.
Anything, but mediocre. The city which was once trying to make its both ends meet has now opened its doors to art and culture. The new generation with working mothers, busy fathers in US shifts, brought up of by Ayahs, and American visas have decided to live their perfect American family life only closer to home. The stories are very true to Bangalore city and its people. They are not extreme miseries or achievements, they are a piece of daily hopes and struggles. Each story explores a different genre from the same city.
A young girl from a Convent school and her relationship with her Ayah maid , retired father and mother living their lonely life away from their children settled abroad, young couples living an independent life financially and emotionally, reconciliation of the generation gap between traditional parents and modern kids, young engineers with their dilemma of arranged or love marriages, and many more. They were most beautifully written. They were Short stories in a metaphor form.
Accolades to Lavanya for writing a great collection of Short Stories for us and her muse — the Bangalore city. To read more Book reviews and about Books, please visit my blog: Storywala. Author 19 books followers. I almost didn't finish this book. Then I got to the title story, "The Red Carpet.
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