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WOMEN MAKE THE WORLD GO ROUND
"INDIA GRAY" is a collection of 4 stories of varying lengths ('Outnumbered at Oxford', 'The Ayah's Tale', 'India Gray', and 'Bitter Tea'), all of which are set in venues as diverse as 1919 Britain and the Asian subcontinent from the time of the British Raj to the early 21st Century.
Sujata Massey is the type of writer who has a rare skill in creating characters who are real and easily relatable to the reader, and in also educating the reader about the cultural nuances, history and relationships among people through economical, insightful prose. What is more: each story is centered around 4 remarkable women (Parveen Mistry, a law student at St. Hilda's College, Oxford; Menakshi Dutt, a young Bengali woman working as an ayah for a wealthy British family in 1920s Bengal; Kamala Lewes, a Bengali polyglot, married to a British civil official, and working for the Red Cross in a military hospital in Assam, India during the spring of 1945; and Shazia, a teenaged Pakistani living with her family in a village in NW Pakistan controlled by a Muslim fundamentalist), who --- despite the social and cultural restrictions of their time --- show remarkable resourcefulness and strength of character in dealing with a variety of challenging situations.
I so much enjoyed reading "INDIA GRAY" and felt pained after reading the last page. More please.