Women & Girls’ life in a book that connects small town living of North India through interlinked stories. Its ideal for Diversity Studies & Cultural Competency & Orientation in addition to Women and Gender Studies and Asian Studies. New Fiction for Middle Grade & also Book Club and ShortFiction.

New Work from Author Dr. Shweta Singh (Author of Marriage Mirage)

In the first chapter/ story we meet Pingala, a fifteen year old moving from her magical, indulgent, free world to a city college. From middle class artifacts of colony to intriguing ones of foreign tourists, to making red chilli pickles to seeking romance in the moon on the terraces… urban & small town India come alive in these pages with Shagun Pingla Gauri, Rati, Kaali, Amrita, and Laali.

At the same, it is a fun tale of villages and its mysteries of Godesses…right from prologue set in two villages, the social and emotional intricacies kick in…subtle & sharp.

If you reflect and look deeply, Red Chilli Pickle questions stereotypes perpetuated within academia & mainstream fiction that berate & judge Women from Indian Subcontinent and presume parochial & coloquial realities. It also begins the discussion on static dualities of modernity & traditionalism

Buy it here.

This coming of age novel told through a woman’s lens and desi storytelling is the kind you would hear on a charpoy or a chauraha or while chit-chatting over a cup of chai or over paan at the roadside. Brimming and overflowing with characters, the book allows exploring life without making judgments. It embraces India in a warm hug of feelings that puts forth the perspective of villages, and small towns, and big cities.

Right from the first chapter opening in the temple of Shiva and an incomplete prayer – the stage is set for the reader to take a one-way ticket to India… the smells and visuals in rich description…This is Book One of a Three Part Series