The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories

by Lavanya Sankaran

Book Overview

Wry humor and a delicious grasp of the friction between generations in Bangalore are the hallmarks of Lavanya Sankaran's fresh, deeply nuanced debut collection. "A potpourri of beggars and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385338171
• ISBN13: 9780385338172
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Dial Press
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

What a surprise!

What a surprise! I chose this book hoping to find something that would help me better understand the other half of my IT team that resides in Bangalore. I got much more than I had hoped for. In addition to providing insight into Bangalore life I found a series of stories that had me laughing out loud at one moment and moved to tears in the next. If your intrest is in short stories, not just Bangalore or India, you might enjoy "The Hotel Eden" by Ron Carlson.

Outstanding

This book is a fantastic read! A glimpse into a modern, changing India by a writer with a keen Austen-esque eye for social manners and mores. The characters are drawn with great delicacy and intimacy, the writing is witty and controlled, yet compassionate - I found myself tearing up at times. Outstanding!

delightful collection

Full disclosure - I'm a friend of the author's family. Still, I'd give this collection a 5-star rating even if I had no personal link to the writer. Wise, witty, and beautifully told, these stories make India - and in particular, Bangalore - come alive. No sappy endings here. Sankaran has just enough attitude to make her characters warm yet edgy and real. IMO, a writer to watch.

a worthy successor to jhumpa lahiri

Lavanya Sankaran has added another B to Jhumpa Lhiri's Boston & bengal from "Interpreter of Maladies". Bangalore comes alive in all its vivid contradictions: its relaxed outlook, its manic urgency; its cosmopolitan lifestyle, its small town mentality; how it is full of bpo high flyers, and yet is a pensioners paradise. Bangalore is a city in transformation, in limbo. Caught somewhere in between, unable to shake off its heritage yet eagerly embracing high-tech. Lavanya Sankaran, like so many people of her generation are caught in this limbo. in the in-between, in the nowhere and everywhere. it is an exciting time to be a young indian, mroe so in bangalore. Lavanya Sankaran's short stories captures the multitude that inhabit this icnredible city. Through the eyes of low-skilled workers, retired neighbours, homely engineers, flashy marketers Lavanya turns the gaze on Bangalore. And her observations are profound and enjoyable. With smartly sculpted characters she brings insight into the crazy lives of the people who live in this city, caught in a time of much change. This is a glorious debut. A must-read for anybody interested in the human condition. More so, for people who have ever tried to deconstruct Modern India or Bangalore. Or its people.

learn what they think of us

So much has been written about the destructive effect of US popular culture on foreign lands that it's refreshing to see these witty portraits of people who have openly embraced the west - despite the conflict it brings. The modern young things written about in this book are from Bangalore, that globalization zeitgeist into which so many US jobs have reportedly dissappeared. In transforming itself from a sleepy and traditional Indian bastion into a high-speed western replica, the city - and its people - test their families and each other in their attempts to balance what they love most about the two cultures. For Americans who aren't really aware of the effect even the most innocuous American "pop culture" can have on the world outside - "The Red Carpet" is worthwhile reading.