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HER new book spotlights the high life of Delhi "that is still trying to come to terms with Western values". Writer Ira Trivedi says The Great Indian Love Story is based on what she has seen in today’s India.
"The experiences of the cast in my book — Serena, her mother, father, stepfather and boyfriends — were those I had seen happening to my friends and their friends," Trivedi told IANS in an interview. She is the author of the best-selling book What Would You Do To Save the World: Confessions of a Could-Have-Been Beauty Queen. A graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and with an MBA degree from Columbia Business School, she was working on another book, Intern, when she was suddenly bored and wanted to write from home in India, she said. "I left Intern halfway after I returned because Delhi had changed. I hadn’t really spent a lot of time in India , but I saw a side of the city that gripped me and wanted to write about it." Her latest work, The Great Indian Love Story, has just been published and is yet to be launched. Trivedi feels that changes in lifestyle in the Capital have taken place because "the economy has opened up, there is more money to spend." In our childhood, we just had the Doordarshan. But now MTV and BBC have changed the way youngsters look at life. There is a whole lot of pop culture in the country," she said. "My brother is 10 and he is growing up differently. I think there is a huge gap between my parents and my generation, and between my grandparents’ generation and my parents’ generation. "That’s why as writers we respond to the divides between generations. It is also interesting to see how immigrants’ children grow up outside the country and adjust to changes when they return," Trivedi said. The novel also brings out the menace of drug addiction in the Capital and paints a gruesome picture. "Three days before Diwali, Amar Khanna and Serena Sharma were found dead in a penthouse apartment in Gurgaon. They were doing cocaine which was laced with other chemicals...," Trivedi says, quoting from her book. "Drug addiction has been growing steadily in the Capital. Ten years ago, may be only 100 kids that I knew were doing it. Then 500 kids and now, probably more than 1,000. "Unfortunately, children here find it a very cool thing to do. When we grew up in the US, we were not encouraged to do drugs because we were told that it was not for young people. Such awareness is missing here," Trivedi said. The writer felt that alcoholism and smoking were also major concerns among youth in the Capital. "One out of three accidents in the Capital is caused by drunken driving," Trivedi said. The Great Indian Love Story is a kind of mirror to contemporary Indian society, feels Trivedi. "Serena messes up her life by falling for a married man. Earlier, such a thing was taboo in the country. But families are changing. They are nuclear. Women are getting more voice. Friends of mine have divorced and have remarried. But there is more instability. "Serena, my heroine, for example, was too young and a lot of things happened to her very fast. Women need more empowerment in this country to make marriages of choice and more awareness," Trivedi said. The writer’s vision of the India of the future is one "which will provide equal opportunities for women, promote secularism, preserve spirituality and traditional culture and make education available to all to help children blend the best of West with the East." Trivedi has resumed work
on her unfinished book Intern. — IANS
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