Arzu

by Riva Razdan

It became the summer that Arzu gained and lost everything that girlhood had set her up for.It is 1991, and India's economy is opening up to foreign investment for the very first time. For wealthy business families across the country, however, it is a move fraught with uncertainty. In Bombay, Arzu, the pampered daughter of a newspaper mogul, finds the situation particularly tense. Her one concern is to score a proposal from her millionaire boyfriend before the country's celebrated liberalization sours his mood any further.Then, an innocent gesture on her part causes all her plans to go awry, and Arzu escapes to New York City with her snobby aunt Parul on the pretext of attending finishing school. While Parul Bua's one-point agenda is to find her a suitable match, Arzu, revelling in the heady independence that New York offers, finds herself poised on the brink of an idea that could change the nature of an entire industry back home.Now, even as Arzu negotiates catty debutante-ball drama and evades the charms of her father's smug protégé, she must prove her worth to investors so as to silence her critics. The question remains, can someone who has always played second fiddle to the men in her life discover how to become the heroine of her own story?

347 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 25, 2022