MY IRON WINGS BY SUBHASHINI DINESH (HARDCOVER)

More often than not uprising has the inner courtyard as its epicentre. Maya, like those around her, is surprised by the defiant streak in her. An ordinary young woman without any idea of life’s lofty ways, she is spurred into rebellion by a domineering father’s attempt to foist marriage on her on unequal terms. She finds the unjustness of the whole arrangement humiliating. Why doesn’t the boy’s side send his pictures for her to decide? Is the man towed by parents and relatives to his first meeting with a would-be bride man enough? Why don’t her parents have the privilege of rejecting a bridegroom? The simple, sensible questions troubles her, and in no time turn the everyday girl into an iconoclastic rebel challenging the ingrained orthodoxy of the Srinivasan family. The mutiny, as always, leaves no one unscathed. Implicit in Maya’s defiance are the issues of a woman’s choice, assertion of her preferences. Before peace returns to the household either side accepts that their world has irrevocably changed.