Author(s): Nilanjana Sengupta

Fiction

Chickpeas to Cook is the story of the woman of the tribe, women from some of the smallest of communities, often no more than a few hundred families in Singapore. How do these women live, think, even breathe? What does the Dawoodi Bohra woman answer, for instance, when she's asked if her daughter will don the ridah after marriage? When does the Sikh woman decide it's time to come out of her brother's shadow and live for herself? What does the Eurasian woman do when her DNA report arrives and it doesn't quite tally with what her parents told her? What does the Zoroastrian woman tell the author about bridges and confluences while she helps her navigate a difficult period of introspection? Yes, it's a world of dwindling walls, a veritable house of mirrors where reflections bounce off each other into infinitude, yet each appears more familiar than the last. It's about ordinary women living ordinary lives, taking ordinary decisions, made extraordinary only by the love, empathy and fortitude they invest into it. But beware! For under the haunting haze lies magic - a woman's communion with herself, with the truths of the universe. And when one sows together the individual stories it transforms into a connected journey of intimate understanding.