Publisher's Synopsis
A witty, wry look at contemporary marriage and relationships, from the author of For Matrimonial Purposes.Paru is a twenty-year old girl from Agra, outside Delhi, also the home of the Taj Mahal. Through a match arranged by her parents when she was five, she is forced to marry Jeetu, a young Indian living in California. It is evident from the outset that they have nothing in common. She is traditional, shy and quiet. He is, as her parents are shocked to find out, "very Americanized". More than that, his interests run to the fringe - he sports a ponytail and Birkenstocks and is into raw food and chakra-balancing.Jeetu works at the neighbourhood supermarket, as an assistant manager. Paru - in the beginning anyway - is a stay-at-home wife. She lives with her in-laws, and is obliged to do their bidding. She is lonely and confused. She tries to be happy, but doesn't know how. Returning home to her parents in India - as much as she wants to do that - is not an option. She is in a strange country, where the differences contrast so starkly with her previous life.Jeetu, on the other hand, is bumbling through the marriage. He has a good heart, but no clue. For all his "awareness", he doesn't know what to do to make his wife happy. Paru finds herself flung into her husband's life and world: the "touch circles" that he attends, the "massage magic" nights, the personal growth workshops where people take all their clothes off.Within all this, she begins to assert herself. She starts looking for a job - briefly entering the institution of Hollywood as an extra. She makes a few friends, among them a very cosmopolitan young Indian lady who helps Paru sharpen her social skills.Somewhere in all this, she falls in love with her husband - but not before a series of circumstances, people and events that are poignant and funny, moving and amusing.