Jahnavi Barua’s latest novel is a coming-of-age story that resonates with our uncertain times A pandemic may not seem like the best time to read a subtle coming-of-age novel set in Assam.
Yet Jahnavi Barua’s new book, Undertow, has more in common with the covid-19 world than you may think. It is a novel about migration, exile and loneliness, all themes we will be struggling with in a post-pandemic world.
Rukmini, a medical student in Guwahati, is disowned and exiled by her conservative parents after she marries Alex, her classmate from a different religion and community.
Shattered, she flees to Bengaluru, and never returns to Assam. But in Bengaluru, too, she is an outsider. Twenty-five years later, her daughter Loya, an elephant
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