Indian Secularist
The Age of Shiva, Manil Suri, 2007
Connaught Circle Delhi 
The story of a wealthy secular family who escape Rawalpindi in newly partitioned Pakistan to move to Delhi and reestablish a publishing business. The father’s hero is Nehru and he supports the Congress party and is awarded government printing jobs to regain his former financial success. The mother is an illiterate daughter of a zimindar an upper class Urdu Hindu who secretly practices her religion that the father views as a bunch of superstitions. The family has three daughters that the father is determined to see get university educations and become modern independent women, free from Hindu religious restrictions. He gets far more than he bargained for.
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As a university student, the oldest daughter, Roopa acquires a poor boyfriend, a singer, Dev, who wants to move to Bombay to pursue a Bollywood singing career. The 17 year old second daughter, Meera and main character of the novel, secretly stalks the illicit couple even following them into movie theaters. When Roopa suddenly announces her engagement to the son of a successful family, Dev’s heart is broken and Meera pounces, catching Dev on the rebound. When Meera’s father can’t persuade his stubborn daughter to give Dev up, he gives a generous cash dowry so the couple will be able to escape Dev’s family and move to Bombay. Dev’s family grabs the money to use as a dowry for their own daughter and Meera is trapped in a tiny, poor Hindu extended family home without even the privacy of a bedroom. She becomes pregnant and the father offers to buy Meera and Dev a flat in Bombay with enough money to get started if Meera will get an illegal abortion and agree to go to university. The couple agrees and their saga begins. The youngest daughter, Sharmila is a mediocre student who largely escapes the exaggerated expectations of the father. She later discovers a love and aptitude for math and science, earns a PhD and becomes a professor.
Nehru 
Indira Gandhi 
The novel takes place against the background of India’s birth. The main families are Urdu Hindus from Pakistan and have varying difficulty migrating to India after the partition. We learn of the death trains, the refugee camps without even tents, the suicides. We vaguely follow to career of Nehru, the shock of the Chinese invasion, the wars with Pakistan. After Nehru’s death, the father throws his loyalty and support to Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi, and we vaguely follow her notorious career and corrupt antics of her son Sangay. We discover the forced sterilization programs, the state of emergency when Indira seized power after the courts had ordered her to resign. Through the character of Dev’s brother, an organizer in the Hindu Rashtriya Manch a radical Hindu political movement emphasizing martial arts training, we follow the rise of Hindu political parties that eventually become dominant, replacing the corrupt Congress party.
In a humorous development, the illiterate, upper class mother, now 60 years old, suddenly joins in student demonstrations against the Congress party and Indira. She is quickly adopted as a mascot by the students. When she gets arrested, the police quietly call her husband to come get her, much to his embarrassment as a Congress party pillar.
Chowpatty Beach Bombay 
The novel is a good superficial introduction to Indian political history, but is primarily a treatment of growing up and finding your way in a new, ever changing, ancient and modern country that is India. When Dev is run over by a taxi during a blackout in a war with Pakistan, Meera becomes the one thing you least want to be in traditional India, a widow with a young son. She throws everything into her relationship with her son to the point of damaging him but, of course, he rebels, joining the radical Hindu organization of his uncle and then escapes that to a private boarding school paid for by his grandfather. Meera is forced, for the first time, to seriously consider building a career, maybe as a teacher to kids her son’s age.