Hachette India

Arzu

Riva Razdan

'It became the summer that Arzu gained and lost everything that girlhood had set her up for.'

It is 1991, and Indiaâs economy is opening up to foreign investment for the very first time. For wealthy business families across the country, however, it is a move fraught with uncertainty. In Bombay, Arzu, the pampered daughter of a newspaper mogul, finds the situation particularly tense. Her one concern is to score a proposal from her millionaire boyfriend before the countryâs celebrated liberalization sours his mood any further.

Then, an innocent gesture on her part causes all her plans to go awry, and Arzu escapes to New York City with her snobby aunt Parul on the pretext of attending finishing school. While Parul Buaâs one-point agenda is to find her a suitable match, Arzu, revelling in the heady independence that New York offers, finds herself poised on the brink of an idea that could change the nature of an entire industry back home.

Now, even as Arzu negotiates catty debutante-ball drama and evades the charms of her fatherâs smug protÃ©gÃ©, she must prove her worth to investors so as to silence her critics. The question remains, can someone who has always played second fiddle to the men in her life discover how to become the heroine of her own story?

Riva Razdan

Riva Razdan is a recent graduate of New York University, where she studied under novelists Tishani Doshi (The Pleasure Seekers) and Miguel Syjuco (Ilustrado). Constant relocation in her formative years made her a relentless writer - an outsider trying to make sense of an everchanging landscape by mapping the world through the fictional journeys of her heroines. The more she moved between cultures, the more she began to examine her own north Indian upbringing. She realized that there was a lack of representation of strong-minded and ambitious millennial women who also longed for romantic fulfilment in popular Indian fiction. As a result, she decided to delve deep into the Indian society of her girlhood to weave some wayward strands of its patriarchal fabric as conflicts in her stories and create romantic-feminist fiction that encourages, supports and comforts young Indian women. Riva has studied storytelling in Paris, Florence, Abu Dhabi and New York. She currently resides in Mumbai and is a screenwriter for Anil Kapoor Films.Riva Razdan is a recent graduate of New York University, where she studied under novelists Tishani Doshi (The Pleasure Seekers) and Miguel Syjuco (Ilustrado). Constant relocation in her formative years made her a relentless writer - an outsider trying to make sense of an everchanging landscape by mapping the world through the fictional journeys of her heroines. The more she moved between cultures, the more she began to examine her own north Indian upbringing. She realized that there was a lack of representation of strong-minded and ambitious millennial women who also longed for romantic fulfilment in popular Indian fiction. As a result, she decided to delve deep into the Indian society of her girlhood to weave some wayward strands of its patriarchal fabric as conflicts in her stories and create romantic-feminist fiction that encourages, supports and comforts young Indian women. Riva has studied storytelling in Paris, Florence, Abu Dhabi and New York. She currently resides in Mumbai and is a screenwriter for Anil Kapoor Films.