My Sainted Aunts

The day Mayadevi turned sixty-eight, seventy or seventy-five years old (her date of birth was an ever-changing fact linked to her moods), she decided to go to London.' Thus begins Bulbul Sharma's delightful collection of stories about her aunts, young and old, tetchy and unpredictable, brave and exasperating. One aunt thinks nothing of leaving her village to walk up high mountains in search of peace and shelter, another ends up with a husband who cannnot cope with the daily humiliation of having to look up a his tall wife, and a third enters service in a palace that every day sinks a little deeper into the pond beneath its foundation. Illuminated by a vast compassion for the travails of women struggling to cope with changing lifestyles and traditions, My Sainted Aunts is as much an insight into the lif of a lost generation as it is a rollicking read.