Mall Sangeeta - Flight of the Flamingo

westland ltd

FLIGHT OF THE FLAMINGO

Sangeeta Mall celebrates fiction about women who have grown up to believe that they have the power to follow their gut. Armed with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, Sangeeta changed course from being an entrepreneur with a business management degree to becoming a storyteller fairly recently. She is also the curator of the Beyond Pink series. Sangeeta lives in Mumbai with her family.

Until a few years ago I wondered when we would start telling our own stories, stories about contemporary urban women and their experiencesmy experiences. The understanding derived from a life lived and questioned, not merely endured. The Flight of the Flamingo is one such. More power to storytellers like Sangeeta Mall. May the tribe flourish! Ratna Pathak Shah, Actor

For oncea book with spunky women, spineless men and a strong story. Keeps your interest till the end. A light and easy read but with very real people and real issues. Different from the usualmore than chick-lit. Rashmi Bansal, author of Connect the Dots and Follow Every Rainbow

With Flight of the Flamingo , Sangeeta has once again produced a book you can read at one sitting. She is pioneering a new genre here. Harsha Bhogle, leading sports commentator and writer

Flight of the Flamingo

SANGEETA MALL

westland ltd

61, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600 095
No. 38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026
23/181, Anand Nagar, Nehru Road, Santacruz East, Mumbai 400 055
93, 1st Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002

First published in India by westland ltd, 2013

Copyright Sangeeta Mall 2013

All rights reserved

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 978 93 82618 99 7

Typeset in Adobe Garamond by SRYA, New Delhi
Printed at Thomson Press (I) Ltd.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

Theres nothing more toxic or deadly than a human child.
A single touch could kill you.

James Coburn

Acknowledgements

T his book happened after several false starts. I credit the right beginning to my friends, Alka Deshpande and Archana Pai Kulkarni, who pointed me in the right direction and helped me to discover not just the what, but also the how, of writing.

To my friend Preeti Vyas goes the credit for almost everything about the book except the actual writing process. This book in this shape was impossible without her guidance.

Im grateful to my editor, Renuka Chatterjee of Westland, who highlighted painstakingly some missing links in the final manuscript and helped shaped it into its final, readable form.

The credit for my being able to write a novel at all goes to Chuck Kinder, the grand old man of writing at University of Pittsburgh.

I would not be writing anything, including this page, were it not for my husband, Damodar, who has a vision that far transcends my own. His encouragement and participation is central to all my ventures. To him I owe an eternal debt of gratitude.

And finally, a big thank you to my parents for their belief in me.

About the Beyond Pink Series

B eyond Pink is a platform that celebrates stories of modern Indian women.Sangeeta Mall, the curator of this series, believes that every womans story deserves to find expression.

Flight of the Flamingo is one such story.

Finally we urban Indian women are telling our own stories. Hurrah! Ratna Pathak Shah said what thousands of women felt when she read my first novel. Real women make for real stories. And increasingly, urban Indian women are making their own stories, tales that dont need to borrow from anywhere to make them interesting.

There is celebration in the air, the celebration of everyday life. But what a life! Someone raised a child with a physical disability alone while her husband worked hard on foreign shores to pay for the extensive and expensive treatment that the child required, someone else gave up a flourishing career in the US to come back to India to take care of her elderly parents. A newly-married woman became a widow within two weeks and moved on to have a brilliant career in banking. These stories of courage and determination deserve as much recognition as the more conventional stories of star crossed lovers and young women coming face to face with their own sexuality. These stories are a tribute to the face of the new India, one in which urban, educated women live life on their terms, both at home and professionally. Even a few years back, it was considered extraordinary for a woman to live away from home in pursuit of a career. Now there are whole legions doing so. No longer is it difficult to find women who use their education to add different flavours and experiences to their lives. And they love to see their story in print!

Beyond Pink is a platform for narrating stories of urban Indian women who have taken life by the horns, decided theres no better person than themselves to lead it, and then quietly got on with it. There are many women of a new, strong India who have such stories to tell, and I am going to be the curator of these tales under the Beyond Pink banner.

Readers of this book will find that they too have a story that they wish to tell. Well, if you have a story, then this is your platform! Together, we can bring some interesting fiction to all the readers out there, fiction that comes close to reality, is born on Indian soil and demonstrates that grit and determination arent just battlefield attributes but essential ingredients for a complete life.

Send your stories to beyondpink@westland-tata.com and I will read them and act as your curator. Very soon, your Beyond Pink stories may get seen in womens blogs, magazines and maybe someday as a Westland book title!

Prologue

E leven is supposed to be an auspicious number. It is the gift that is given to a newborn baby, eleven rupees, to welcome the new soul into this world. It is a straightforward number, and has no twists and turns. Theres something warm and honest about eleven, with its two uprights, giving it balance and dignity, all the things that a marriage should have. We were eleven people at this marriage. It seemed like a good omen.

The groom followed the bride hungrily with his eyes. He wasnt, I discerned, waiting to take her to the conjugal bed, he was waiting to fold her into his arms, protect her from all the evil and harm and heartache that this world could deliver, shield her from every hurt. It wasnt possible, his eyes seemed to say, but he was damn well going to try. That was why he had joined his life to hers, to hold her arm and keep her from falling when she tripped. He wasnt, he said, going to let anything happen to her, a simple reassurance that was so sweeping in its intent that it was practically impossible to follow. But he was going to try. His love for her bound him to the oath of to love and protect her forever, and he wasnt one to take his marriage vows lightly. If it were possible, he would have whisked her away right then to a desert island, and kept her there, hidden from the world, for the rest of their days.