Lost Directions

Thirty-six-year-old Sangeeta Chainani, tragically widowed at an early age, and now Reader in English at the Victoria and Albert College, Bombay, has been banished by her aristocratic Sindhi family to the quiet ashram Dukh Dõõr. Her family hopes that in this Gandhian haven of simple living and high thinking, she will pursue her doctoral dissertation on Dorothy Richardson, and forget her love affair with Iqbal, a divorced Muslim dentist.

But matters other than literature and the quiet life keep intruding : her childhood memories, the stories of Sind and its folk tales narrated to her by elderly relations, her lively correspondence past and present; thoughts of the world of academia and falling educational standards — and of course the unusual residents of Dukh Dõõr.


The author presents a cross-section of Indian society with a touch of satire and humour. She brings to life an appealing heroine in whom innocence and naivete are blended with an urge to independence and feminist ideas, and introduces a cast of unforgettable ‘characters’.