Ladies coupâe

Meet Akhilandeswari, Akhila for short: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider.

Until the day she gets herself a oneway ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari.

In the intimate atmosphere of the Ladies Coupe - the all-women sleeping car - Akhila gets to know her fellow travellers.

Janaki, pampered wife and confused mother; Margaret Shanti, an imaginative chemistry teacher married to an insensitive tyrant; Prabha Devi, the perfect daughter and wife, who has glimpsed freedom in a swimming pool; fourteen-year-old Sheela, with her ability to perceive what others cannot; and Marikolanthu, whose life has been turned upside down by a man's lust.

As she listens to the other women's stories, Akhila is drawn into the most private moments of their lives, seeking in them a solution to the question that has been with her all her life: Can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete?

This deliciously warm, funny, moving novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India. At the same time, it reveals how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with husbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same the world over.

With characters so vivid they become friends and storytelling so enticing it holds you from the first page, Ladies Coupe introduces an exciting new Indian writer.